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Copyright N°._i: U_ 

C O PV 2 / 

COHRIGHT DEPOSIT. 














# 










ALAS, THAT SPRING! 



Alas, That Spring! 


BY 

ELINOR MORDAUNT f' i 

» » 

Author of “ Laura Creichton,” etc. 






BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 






M’flfc* 



Copyright, 1923 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(incorporated) 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

Printed by Geo. H. Ellis Co., Boston, Massachusetts 
Bound by Boston Bookbinding Co., Cambridge, Massachusetts 

\ 


ALAS, THAT SPRING! 






Alas, That Spring— ! 


PART I 
CHAPTER I 

“Hey! You there! You’ve no right to fish 
the-r-re! Go awa-a-ay—do you hear? Stop it— 
stop it, I tell you!” 

The clear treble, with its long-drawn-out syllables, 
floated down the green rush-tufted slope to the 
river; piercing the swirl, the impatient mutterings 
round the great black boulders which blocked its 
quarter-way course; the chatter along the' pebbly 
margin, where things were easy and clear going. 

Teddy O’Hara—far out in the stream, her petti¬ 
coats tucked into the top of her hip-high wading- 
boots, the tail of something suspiciously like a che¬ 
mise well in evidence—pursed up her red lips and 
dropped a fly with the' nicest, dexterity in the exact 
spot where a salmon had that moment risen; then, 
as the cry was repeated, looked round and put out 
her tongue, grinning widely*. 

“The kid from Greylands,” remarked Honora, 
and turning lazily from one side to another—re¬ 
gardless of Denise, who lay with her head pillowed 
on her knees—she cupped her rounded chin in one 

i 



2 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


hand and threw a glance lip the field, dipping and 
rising to the stone wall with the child’s figure poised 
upon it. 

Honora O’Hara—was there ever such a combina¬ 
tion!—“But of course she’ll marry; I won’t have 
any daughter of mine an old maid, and I just love 
the name Honora,” was what her mother had said, 
splitting the two with “Gertrude” as a peace¬ 
offering to the half-sister whose lover she had stolen. 

“Cheeky brat! For the Lord’s sake stop wrig¬ 
gling, Nora—my head was just right with your knee 
as it was,” grumbled D’enise, in her soft half¬ 
brogue; upon which Honora turned back, ‘compla¬ 
cently stretching out her slender limbs, snuggling 
deep among the rushes and river mint and meadow¬ 
sweet. 

Once again there came the cry, “Go away!” 

“Guinea-fowl,” murmured Honora sleepily. 

“Come back,” amended Denise; while the two 
small boys who had been lying on the bank kicking 
their bare legs in the air exerted themselves so far 
as to scramble to their knees and put their thumbs 
to their noses; then bumping against each other, 
rolled over in one of their interminable tussles, half 
affection, half natural pugnacity. 

Immense masses of cumulus cloud, silver and pale 
grey, were piled along the horizon, billowing up 
round that small circle of world in which the young 
O’Haras disported themselves, lived, moved, and 
had their being with no single thought beyond it, 
for the moment; and it was always that with them 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3 


—the moment. High above was a clear blue sky, 
with wind-blown wisps of silver. On the opposite 
side of the water the osier beds showed upright 
wands of flame, russet and madder; far beyond 
these lay the mountains, the coursing-ground of 
cloud shadows, indigo blue, almost black. There 
was blue in the depths of the river, amber and olive 
and glints of pure light in the shallows: the green 
was intense, even for Ireland, for it had rained dur¬ 
ing the whole of the week before, and anyone apart 
from an O’Hara would have taken his or her death 
lying on the damp soil, despite its spring mattress 
of sun-warmed growth. But nothing harmed them, 
fearing nothing, reverencing nothing as they did. 

“What’s the good of fussing? Let’s be happy 
while we can.” There you had the whole cult of 
the clan. 

“If that kid falls off the wall on the far side, sure 
it’s her that will be trespassin’!” yelled Teddy, and 
this jerked the boys to a semi-upright position again. 
If only she’d fall! 

“The damned imperence of her when we’ve al¬ 
ways fished here!” 

“A fool of a girl—a kid like that!” 

“All togged up in white, too! My God, whoever 
saw anything to beat that?” 

“Who does she think she is, anyway, the lit¬ 
tle—” 

Among themselves, the young O’Haras were any¬ 
thing but choice in their language; small wonder 
that the aunt in charge wrote to her step-brother- 


4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


in-law, far away in India, with nothing but the 
fun of it all, the lightly regarded expense, as his 
share of the family life: 

“Derrick and Gerald ought to be at school, though 
of course I’d just hate to part with the darlings. But 
the truth is, they’re getting beyond me, and beyond 
everyone else too. The girls are bad enough with 
their language and their accents, but those two young 
imps of boys want a man’s hand over them. I caught 
Gerry matching himself swear word for swear word 
against one of the stable lads the other day, and upon 
my soul, I never heard anything like it; where he could 
have learnt it . . etc., etc. 


“Pure heredity; hanged if I wouldn’t back any 
son of mine for a loose-hung tongue against the 
whole field.” That’s what the fond father had to 
say at this juncture, flicking over the pages of the 
closely-written letter. “What a vile hand your sis¬ 
ter Gertie does write nowadays! I can’t be expected 
to wade through this with all I have on my hands. I 
suppose if I send her a fresh draft to the bank it 
’ull foot the bill, eh, what? Anyway, what’s the 
good o’ fussing. It won’t hurt the kids to run wild 
for a bit, run the liquor out of the blood while 
they’re young.” 

“I’m never quite sure how old the boys are,” said 
Lady Taghmony, glancing up from under the 
hands of the maid who was piling her fine pale gold 
hair in a mass of curls round her small head, fram- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


5 


ing the tiny pink and white face with its brilliant 
blue eyes and half-pathetic, wholly impish mouth; 
the most irresponsible mother of six it was possible 
to imagine; a wholly fantastic, delightful incongru¬ 
ity in the way of mothers. 

“But I rather like having babies,” she had said 
when someone commiserated her upon her fate. “I 
really don’t show it until just at the very last, and 
there’s nothing like it for clearing the complexion. 
Besides, they’re such darling cuddly things when 
they’re tiny; and really no trouble. I can’t make 
out why people make such a fuss about children 
being a trouble; after all, there are any amount of 
people with no kids of their own just longing to 
look after them.” 

Oh yes, it was fun to have children—all a part 
of the fun of life. She didn’t mind the pain—was 
gallant enough for that; feared nothing, dreaded 
nothing, and forgot—with a genius for forgetting. 

There you had her, slipping through Time like a 
silver fish in blue water. So much fun—fun to be 
with the children who adored and petted her; fun 
to be alone with her husband, adoring and petting 
with the perfect facility of a man of much and 
varied practice: “Of course, Muggins has shaken 
a loose leg, we all know that,” was what she said—* 
using, as she did to everyone, her own special nick¬ 
name, the origin of which was a joke between those 
two alone—fun to be adored; and if not exactly 
petted, waited upon hand and foot by every young 
man she came in contact with; extravagantly con- 


6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


sidered by her husband’s A.D.C.’s, whom she herself 
chose for their looks. Fun to have everything all 
ways at once—forgetful of any scrap of life’s gay 
kaleidoscope which happened to be out of the pat¬ 
tern at the moment—each moment the whole of 
life. 

“I simply can’t remember the children’s ages—I 
never can remember,” she complained now, and with 
truth, for had she not on the way home last time 
—as a sort of apology for the delay of a fortnight 
in Paris—sent Honora, sixteen then and well 
grown for her age, a dozen pairs of kid gloves, 
lemon and white and silvery grey, fit for a child of 
six?—“only Edwina’s,” she went on, “and that’s 
because of her being born while dear King Edward 
was still Prince of Wales*—I’d never have dared to 
ask him to be godfather if he had been king—and 
the lovely brooch he sent her for a christening pres¬ 
ent; such a frightful pity I lost it.” 

“The year Ladas won the Derby, eh?” 

“Yes—well, that shows you the boys must be get¬ 
ting on, nine or ten or eleven or something like that. 
Muggins, I really believe old Gertie’s right and they 
ought to go to a preparatory school; they don’t learn 
anything from those governesses. Governesses are 
no good, you know; if they’re pretty they flirt with 
all the men about the place, and if they’re not pretty 
no one takes any notice of them. I really think 
we’d better settle about a school; it would be a nui¬ 
sance if they couldn’t get into Eton.” 

“Of course they’ll get into Eton—all our peo- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


7 


pie always have been at Eton. Ten or eleven!— 
by Jove, it’s impossible to credit it, with you look¬ 
ing like you do—I really believe you grow prettier 
every day, Di; ’pon my soul, there was never any¬ 
one like you!” 

Lord Taghmony, sitting on the edge of his wife’s 
bed swinging his feet, for they had just changed 
out of their riding kit, let his eyes run over the back 
of her white shoulders, the nape of her neck under 
its high-piled curls, for her maid was busied over 
the very last touch; then turned to the reflection of 
her gay little face in the mirror. “Lord, to think 
of all those kids! By God, I never saw a woman 
who kept her looks as you do, and you never seem 
to fuss about it either.” 

“Oh, I don’t know, one does feel so frightfully 
young inside. Nine or ten—! Really, Muggins, 
I think I’d like to have another baby—nothing but 
those squealing little failures of twins since Gerry 
was born such ages and ages ago.” 

“Well, my dear, it might be managed. There’s 
life in—” 

“Oh, Holmes!” Lady Taghmony broke in with 
a sharp little scream. “How you tweaked me! 
There’s one hair as tight as tight! You’ll have to 
unpin that last curl. And, Muggins, do for good¬ 
ness’ sake go and have your bath, and don’t shock 
Holmes into fits while she’s doing my hair.” 

“I like that, when you started on that blessed 
baby ramp. All I said—well, what the devil could 
I say? If I’d said—” 



8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


His Excellency broke off, and moving over to 
one of the long open windows which gave on to 
the wide balcony—with its massed maidenhair fern, 
its stone pillars and arches, the carefully-kept gar¬ 
den, with its eternally watered lawns and massed 
palms, immediately below them, and beyond all this 
the wide plains white with heat, the blue band of 
the mountains—stood staring out: thinking, plan¬ 
ning; his rather too full, too red underlip protrud¬ 
ing. He snapped his fingers and whistled to a 
puppy playing upon the grass, then swung round 
again; stumbled over his wife’s ayah who squatted 
on the floor; and, cursing her good-humoredly,, 
jerked up a pile of white muslin from her knee 
with the crop of his riding-whip, while a loosened 
roll of pale blue satin ribbon uncurled itself out 
over the polished boards. 

“What the devil’s this?” 

“My dress for to-day.” 

“Blue ribbon and white muslin, and you an old 
married woman, with the Lord only knows how 
many children!” 

“I don’t suppose He troubles His head about it, 
one way or another,” retorted her Excellency flip¬ 
pantly. “Anyway, I’m not going to dress like a 
frump, or look like a frump, or behave like a frump 
for anyone, so there!” she added, and turning her 
head, put out her tongue at her husband; not one 
day older, in all the essentials of life, than her 
daughter Teddy, hip-high in the swirling waters of 
the river at home in Ireland. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


9 


As her husband moved through the wide- 
curtained arch into his dressing-room, she called 
after him: “In that little matter we were speaking 
of: well, well, if you’re a good boy we’ll see 
what—” then, breaking off to glance back and 
powder her nose—they were all like that, hardly 
ever ending a sentence—laughed at Holmes’s scan¬ 
dalised reflection in the mirror. Holmes, who had 
been with her ever since she married, would have 
died for her, and yet could never get used to her, 
never approve of her. 

“Only a nice little baby, Holmes, just one this 
time, a very small baby,” she insinuated, as whee- 
dlingly as though it were all Holmes’s affair. 
“After all, no one could object to an innocent little 
baby ; why, that’s what one’s married for. If you 
were married, Holmes— Why, some people, even 
if they’re not married, with a little, very little ef¬ 
fort—” 

“My lady!” broke in the woman in a panic of 
outraged propriety, with a sharply hostile glance in 
the direction of the bland ayah, winding up the blue 
ribbon between her brown hands, fingers and thumbs 
outstretched. “Your ladyship must remember that 
some of these black images understand good English 
more than they ever let on to.” 

“Pheugh, Arracon—Arracon has babies of her 
own; how many is it, Arracon?” 

The woman, smiling her inscrutable down- 
glancing smile, held up four slender fingers, and her 
Excellency laughed. 


10 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Oh, well, Tve beaten her already, eh, Holmes? 
—and who would think it to look at me! La, la, 
what a hot day it’s going to be!” 

She stood up, stretching, and moved across the 
immensely wide room, with its shining, lake-like 
expanse of bare polished floor; then stood poised, 
pirouetting in front of the tall swing glass, light as 
a fairy in her short white petticoat and apology for 
a bodice, tied up with blue ribbons over the shoul¬ 
ders. 

“Who would think it to look at me ? Come now, 
Holmes, who would?” 

One of the A.D.C.’s had knocked at her husband’s 
door and was speaking in a low voice, interrupted 
by a loud burst of schoolboy laughter. 

“By Gad, I never heard anything to beat that! I 
say Di—do you hear, Di?—did you ever come 
across anything to equal this? You know that 
long, sour-faced fellow Dalrymple—” 

“No, no, your Excellency, really—I’d never have 
told your Excellency if—” broke in a young hor¬ 
rified voice. I entreat you, it’s not fit—I do beg 
of you.” 

“All right, Fortescue, all right, though who the 
devil made you the censor of my stories—oh, well, 
your story?—and a damned good story too.” Lord 
Taghmony was still laughing. “You’ll have to 
wait, Di, that’s all. . . . Oh, well, Fortescue, 
look here, it’s a jolly sight too good to keep to 
myself.” 

“I always knew he was that sort of person, any- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ii 


how,” came Lady Taghmony's clear little voice, with 
a ring of mirth in it. 

“What sort of person?” 

“Well, the sort of person who would do the sort 
of killing thing that Billy’s been telling you of. 
Oh, for shame, Captain Fortescue! I didn’t think 
it of you, really I didn’t—a nice young man like 
you!” 

• •••••• 

Little wonder that the young O’Haras were what 
they were. Poachers? Oh, well, what was poach¬ 
ing? A part of life. Their mother poached, deli¬ 
cately, as a butterfly: nothing ugly there, for she 
was sweet and clean through and through; but still 
there were hearts, dreams, thoughts, belonging by 
rights to other women and feverishly misplaced. 
Their father poached, more grossly, persistently; 
and yet for all that he had made his wife entirely 
happy for twenty years, and there are few better 
men of whom one can say as much. The two of 
them were like halcyons on smooth and sunny seas, 
all sail set—no real cargo or ballast: nothing much in 
the way of principles: certain niceties, too oddly de¬ 
fined and intangible to be described as points of 
honour, and no maxims whatever: voracious of all 
that life had to offer, snatching where it was not 
offered; and yet with so much gaiety overflowing 
upon the immediate world around them, that it .set 
one wondering what sort of people, take it all in all, 
are productive of the largest sum of happiness— 
others and their own. 


12 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“The cash in hand,” “the eaten cake,” you can’t 
have it both ways: the tragedy being that so many 
have it neither: too sad for earth, too glum for God. 


t 


CHAPTER II 




Henrietta Rorke did not fall from her perch but 
stepped down from it into her own boundaries. 
For it was like this: the Taghmony estate of Clcn- 
ross had a far longer river frontage than that of 
Greylands, miles upon miles of it, poor land, as 
often as not in flood, patched with bogs or bristling 
with rocks; useless from an agricultural point of 
view for anything but grazing, and yet with such 
blackcock!—and more than an occasional snipe. 

For all this there was a Naboth’s vineyard, one 
field wide and close upon half a mile in length, run¬ 
ning along the river edge like a meagre arm, auda¬ 
cious and mocking, a thief of an arm: cutting into 
it from the Rorke estate. 

The fishing was no better here than elsewhere; but 
it was here that the young O’Haras, with the per¬ 
versity of youth—and there are some who never 
grow up—chose to fish; determined upon a greater 
persistence throughout these holidays, when, for the 
first time in the memory of any one of them, the 
long, low, cream-tinted house, with its cracked and 
discoloured plaster, its barrack-like stabling—all 
that neglected and heartbroken air of a forsaken 
home—was inhabited by others apart from the care¬ 
takers, Patsy Ryan and his wife, who had kept the 
pig in the morning-room like any lady. 

13 



14 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


During the week which had passed since they 
heard of it the O’Haras had haunted that strip of 
river, loudly ostentatious in their trespassing. On 
this day, for the first time, however, there were peo¬ 
ple to be seen, the first real hope of irritating any¬ 
one: men and maid-servants moving about, hang¬ 
ing blinds and curtains in the long, blankly-staring 
windows—“windows like the eyes o’ widow 
women,” as someone had said—other men in white 
overalls on long ladders, chipping away at the old 
paint, a couple of gardeners busy on the lawn. 

Derrick and Gerry had spied out the land before 
breakfast that very morning, been the first to say, 
with any certainty, “They’re there.” Included in 
their report was the tale of a dolls’ house standing 
in the yard, too big to go in at the back door. “A 
dolls’ house of all things!” Just asking to have a 
stone hove at it, one of those tiny sparkling win¬ 
dows—for all the sun lay upon the back of Grey- 
lands—broken for it. 

Gerry got it at the first shot, a fine throw; then, 
rendered careless by his success, had another try, 
missing the dolls’ house and smashing a window in 
the mansion itself. After this two dogs tore out 
of the house barking, and a black man in a white 
linen uniform with a shawl oddly muffled about his 
shoulders came running to the door, shouting at 
them in a strange language; whereupon—bound in 
honour to show themselves afraid of nothing—they 
launched another handful of stones; harmful, this 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


IS 

^time, to nothing more than the one immense pear 
tree—they knew those pears, too—which trembled 
out into a shower of petals, while a slender, pale- 
faced little girl appeared upon the step, also in white, 
with a green parrot upon her shoulder. 

• ••••.. 

The Taghmonys out in India playing at kings 
and queens—all dressed up in uniforms and cocked 
hats, white muslin and pale blue ribbons, with quaint 
black puppets for doll's—beating up a small frothy 
world of their own around them: a world of danc¬ 
ing and music and cards, gymkhanas, polo, races; 
flowers and fruit and flirtation and laughter—and a 
land like the daughter of the horseleech beneath it 
all. 

• •••••• 

The pale, dark-haired child, Henrietta Rorke, a 
quiet, tense volcano of a child, in her immaculate 
white frock; the dolls’ house, the black servant; the 
sunshine lying warm on Greylands’ disreputable 
back with its bleak face astare at the river, the 
mountains beyond them. 

• •••••• 

Five young O’Haras in shabby homespun, stained 
and faded to the tints of the mountainside, grey 
rock and reddish, greyish, green lichen, disporting 
themselves upon someone else’s property, fishing in 
someone else’s waters: bright blue sky, cumulus 
clouds of silver; racing shadows upon the mountain¬ 
side; April airs, mild as milk; the river like life it- 


i6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


self, hurried and intent upon its own affairs, hasten¬ 
ing to an end of which it had no knowledge, with 
a present that all was delight. 

These three odd little pictures, shifting and slid¬ 
ing, merge into one another. 

• •••••.• 

It was a good two miles’ walk from “The Big 
House Up Above,” as Clonross itself was always 
called, to the boundary of that narrow spit of Rorke 
property, and a blazing hot day. But for all that 
the thing had to be done. 

“We’ll learn ’em!” That was Teddy. They 
were whispering together at one end of the 
breakfast-table. The two small boys were still hot 
and dishevelled from the early morning reconnai- 
sance; shoes and stockings dragged on anyhow in 
the hall, a wet lick of hair plastered off from their 
crimson foreheads, the backs of their hands moder¬ 
ately clean—and the less said about the palms of 
them the better. 

Teddy’s voice was shrill, and Lady Fair glanced 
up from her letters: “Learn 'em! Teddy, my 
darling, you can’t learn a person anything—you 
teach.” 

“Oh, I know, auntie—but it’s got a sort of 
smashing sound, different somehow. . . . What? 
A dolls’ house! Good Lord!” 

“If we don’t start the way we mean to go on 
they’ll get into thinking they own the world.” 
That was what they said later on, up in the wide 
sunny schoolroom; for Clonross had no compunc- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


17 


tion at all in turning its broad and comfortably 
ugly back upon the scenery, woody mountain, and 
live impetuous river, sprawling its long low front 
in the sunshine; looking due west, with a flattish 
park clumped in elms and beeches; bog-land and 
a white road, tiny fields like green patches fastened 
round with rough grey stitches of stone wall; a 
placid stretch of lakes; dullish hills in the far dis¬ 
tance. 

“We always have fished there, and, begorra, we 
always will fish there/’ This was Teddy. 

“But such a beast of a walk,” sighed Denise, 
comfortably sunk into that hollow where the springs 
of the schoolroom sofa had given way in the 
most obliging fashion imaginable: Denise with 
her goldy curls and odd, half-awakened eyes more 
violet than blue. 

Honora had been washing her straight black hair 
and sat drying it on the window-sill; the two small 
boys were on the floor, disentangling their fishing- 
lines. 

“It ’ud never do to stop now!” 

“Start in meek as Moses fishing in our own 
waters!” 

“Well, those are our waters. Why, we’ve fished 
there for years and years and donkey’s ears. An’ 
that makes—what do they call it ?—a right o’ way. 
The cheek of them to come back at all! Rorkes, 
whoever heard of Rorkes? It’s like an old crow.” 

“O’Rorke’s no better.” 

“Well, O’Rorke’s the proper thing. If they’re 


i8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ashamed of being Irish, whatever do they want to 
come to Ireland for?” 

“There’s a washerwoman down in O’Flarty’s Bot¬ 
tom !” 

“That’s it, Brigid O’Rorke; likely enough it’s her 
that washes the black fellow’s clothes for him.” 

“An’ the kids.” 

“Keepin’ it in the family!” 

“Lucky for her I didn’t have my ‘catty’ with me, 
or I’d a picked that squawking green baste off her 
shoulder, sure as my name’s Gerry O’Hara.” 

“You couldn’t, a hundred yards or more.” 

“I could.” 

“You lie!” 

“You’re another!” They flung upon each other 
a tangled mass of bullet heads, legs and arms. 
Gerry’s shoes, which were not yet tied, flew off, 
one alighting upon the open piano with a deep crash 
of bass notes. 

Honora on the sunny window-sill combed her 
hair and sang on: 

“When the man from County Clare 
Heard his mother called a mere 
Faith, he scathe red all the features of his face—” 

breaking off as Teddy interposed with a scream: 

“My precious worms! Ach! You idiots! 
You’ve upset the tin! Can’t you see that you’re 
rolling yourselves over my worms? An’ after I’ve 
been to all the trouble o’ digging them an’ all!” she 
cried; upon which the two boys parted, showing 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


i9 

a mingled pulp of grass and worms mashed into 
the shabby carpet. 

“Worms! What the blazes do you want with 
worms? You can’t fish with worms.” 

“Can’t I, though! If I can’t catch a whopper 
under their very eyes with one thing, I’ll catch it 
with another!” Teddy’s full-lipped mouth was 
tight-set beneath her snub, freckled nose—the nose 
that they all said was like nothing so much as a 
bit of putty thrown at a wall, for all the character 
and decision of the entire family lay with her. 
“Trust me, I’ll put the precious Rorkes in their 
place!” she added grimly, and, sitting down on the 
floor began to collect as much of her property 
as was negotiable. “Show them! I’ll show 
them!” 

The general sense of antagonism towards the up¬ 
starts at Greylands was augmented by meeting 
Brigid Ryan at the drive gates, coming up to see 
if she couldn’t beg a wee bit of a cabin out of the 
people at Clonross. 

“For sure they’ve turned me an’ Himself outer 
the place, sayin’ as how we kept it so as it wasn’t 
not fit for a pig. Now, did you ever hear tell o’ 
the like o’ that? ‘Not fit for a pig!’ Is it I, Biddy 
Ryan, as ’ud be afther ill-treatin’ a pig? You 
know me, Miss Honora, an’ Miss Denise, an’ I 
swear to you by the Mither o’ God, Miss Honora, 
darlint, an’ Maester Derrick an’ Maester Gerald— 
as is the dead spit o’ yer dear pa, fur the fine up- 
standin’ looks o’ you—as there did be some o’ the 


20 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


finest an’ handsomest an’ best contented pigs i’ the 
whole o’ the county born under them there front 
stairs, or i’ that quare bit o’ a place wid the eight 
sides to it as these new people do be afther callin’ 
the marnin’ room. ‘Marnin’ room!' I ask you! 
An’ wid no afternoon room to it at all, at all—an’ 
no complaint from anyone o’ the boneens as ever 
I heard on—not so much as a squeak—unless it 
were in the way o’ pleasure at the sight o’ their 
victuals, an’ that no more than human—nor no 
complaint from any of us that ate them, nor from 
Monk the pork-butcher i’ Castleford neither; an’ 
upon my sowl, it’s nothin’ more nor less than the 
thruth, I’m spaekin’, Miss Honora. Sure before 
God that ain’t no way whatever fur upstarts cornin’ 
new into a country ter start on traetin’ dacent peo¬ 
ple. ‘Not fit for a pig,’ indade! What sort a talk 
is that now?” 

And this was not all. Mr. Rorke buying that 
farm called “The Place on the Hill” with the rest 
of the property had told O’Shaunessy that he must 
go unless he made up his mind to pay his rent, and 
regularly too. 

Waving to the young O’Haras from the top of 
the muck heap in front of his house, O’Shaunessy 
had raced down to tell them of his troubles; scram¬ 
bling over the broken ridges of stones which had 
once been walls, cutting the land up into small fields 
of twenty square yards or less: standing gesticulat¬ 
ing wildly in the gay sunshine, a tall, gaunt scare¬ 
crow of a man, the torn sleeves of his ragged shirt 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


21 


fluttering in the wind; his long, sallow, unshaven 
face, wide twisted mouth, and deep-set eyes bitter 
with rage, and yet, somehow or other, exultant with 
a sense of real dramatic grievance. 

“Him carryin’ on as he’ll turn me out o’ me little 
farm, and me wid five little children no higher than 
my knee an’ another close upon us, praise be to 
God! The wee, miserable, forsaken bit o’ a place 
as me great gran’father and me grandfather, an’ 
me father too, have worn the souls outer their 
bodies battlin’ wid, summer an’ winter, day an’ 
night—sein’ as how the land’s near as cruel an’ un¬ 
kind as the English themselves, God blast the souls 
o’ the whole nation o’ ’em. Turn me out! An’ all 
fur a matter o’ rint! ‘If you don’t not pay your 
rint,’ that’s what he says, him down yonder,” he 
cried, jerking a blackened thumb with a nail like 
a Chinaman’s in the direction of Greylands, “when 
it’s you do know, Miss Honora an’ Miss Teddy— 
an’ you too, askin’ yer pardon, Miss Denise—an 
every other decent body too, as do be acquainted 
with me all the years as ever me an’ mine do have 
been on the place such as it is—an’ not worth a 
tinker’s curse at that—sure it’s never so much as a 
taeste o’ our money as they’ve ever seen nor looked 
to see i’ rent.” 

“The cads!” Teddy’s chin went up with a jerk. 
“If they think they’ve come to a place where they 
can turn a man out of his house simply because he’s 
not got the money to pay them, their beastly old 
rent—” 


22 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


But it was O’Shaunessy’s chin in the air at this, 
at much the same angle, too. 

“Sure, Miss Teddy, I could, pay their demmed 
rint an’ be demmed to them, easy as failin’ off a 
wall; there’s not one about these parts as couldn’t 
tell you that. But who is it as ’ud be afther wastin’ 
good money payin’ rint ter the likes o’ them, when 
there’s not one among us as had ever paid rint to 
their betters?” 

“Good for you, O’Shaunessy!” cried the young 
O’Haras at that; upon which the farmer’s lean 
cheek flushed, his eyes kindled. 

“Devil a O’Shaunessy for one!” he cried boast- 
ingly. “An’ that’s not all neither! Poor old 
Phemie Riley as has been grazin’ of her ass on the 
front lawn o’ the place has been tould to taeke it 
away an’ keep it i’ her own plaece, the body! An’ 
afther all the years as it’s been grazin’ there, an’ 
the smallest bit o’ an ass ever was too—not a smaller 
in the whole o’ the county round there don’t not 
be, nor wiser neither. What in the name o’ God is 
things cornin’ to, tell me that, Miss Teddy, if them 
as calls themselves gentlefolk can’t not afford to 
give so much as the grazin’ of an ass to a poor 
old widow body, with no more nor one field and 
a great dun cow ter eat the grass o’ that clane as 
clane.” 

“Just like ’em. I've seen ’em. The old chap’s 
as black as the Earl o' Hell’s working waistcoat!” 
cried Gerry; upon which O’Shaunessy gave him a 
passing glance, sideways, like a magpie. 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


23 


“Sure, he looked whitish, sorter whitish when he 
was speakin’ to me; but I’m not doubtin’ that was 
nought but the artfulness of him—there ain’t nothin’ 
them there sort o’ people ain’t not up to. But there 
you are: he do be afther wantin’ to play tennis 
on the lawn, that’s what they had the face to be 
afther telling her. Tennis-playin’ on the lawn! I 
ask you, what ’ud one small ass do against any 
raisonable people havin’ their bit o’ play on that, 
nor any other lawn, neither? As for me, I've the 
money to go to Ameriky, so he needn’t be thinkin’ 
as how he’s got me there; an’ to Ameriky, which 
is a free country, I’ll go, sooner nor stay here an’ 
be put upon by a black man wid the devil’s own 
trick o’ lookin’ white at times.” 

“Oh, but he can’t be black,” protested Honora, 
as they went on their way, turning back to wave 
to O’Shaunessy from the top of a heap. “He’s 
some sort of a relation of the old O’Rorke who 
used to live here; besides, the kid’s white.” 

“The kid hasn’t been in India as long as he has, 
or anywhere else either; it hasn’t had that lot of 
time to soak black in,” asserted Gerry, with a mouth 
as long drawn and stubborn as O’Shaunessy’s own. 

“What nonsense! You might just as well say 
that mother and dad will be black when they come 
back from India.” 

“Yah-h-h! You might as well talk of mother 
and dad turning a poor old woman’s donkey out o’ 
the corner of a field just from nasty dirty spite, 
an’ for no other reason whatever.” 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


24 

“Oh, well, if they want a tennis-court—” came 
Honora’s half-hearted, unfinished protest. 

“Tennis-court! A pretty sort o’ a tennis-court? 
An’ who will they be getting to play tennis with 
them, that’s what I want to know! People like 
that!” retorted Gerry; while Derrick plodded on 
without a word, kicking at every clod he came upon, 
wrapped in one of those queer silences from which 
nothing, apart from physical aggression, could stir 
him. 

A couple of hundred yards further on they heard 
O’Shaunessy hail them once more, and waited while 
he came shambling up to them, breathless and di¬ 
shevelled. 

He scratched his head, stooped to take a stone 
out of his brogue, and then launched out into some 
incongruous complaint against the nature of the 
land, the stones it held—“outer cussedness, nothin’ 
more nor less, for sure they do be growin’ like the 
hairs o’ me hed, an' no counting them neither”— 
before plunging into what he had really come to 
say, his eyes narrow and twinkling. “If yez got 
speaking to Himself down at Greylands on what I 
said about my bit of money—little enough at that, 
an’ working day and night, an’ the childer keeping 
their belts pulled so tight that there’s nothing left 
for them to pull against, leather to leather—he 
might be afther makin’ more trouble about his dam¬ 
nation rint; not as the money’s worth countin’ by 
them as called themselves gentlefolk, though like 
enough him up at the house ’ud be raisin’ it on me 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 25 

if he got so much as a squint at it, little more nor 
coppers at that/’ 

• •••••• 

Little enough to do with Henrietta Rorke, all 
this; for it is her story and no one else’s, if one 
may judge the importance of one character in any 
drama by the depth to which the whole thing bites, 
the passion and suffering evolved; and yet, if it 
had not been as it was, the whole of it—a queer 
haphazard fabric, warp and weft, mountain and 
hollow, the contradiction of bog and rock, the wild¬ 
ness of the country, the queerness of the people, 
so completely baulking to anyone of Henrietta’s 
nature—far too young to have outgrown that trick 
of puzzling over the contradictions of life—there 
might have been no story to tell, and the happier 
for her. As it is, place and people alike must be 
accepted, not so much as a part of it, as the curtain 
upon which it was thrown, making it possible. 


CHAPTER III 


Mr. Rorke’s ancestry was Irish. Like all generally 
unromantic people, he had one clear streak of ro¬ 
mance in his nature, and that was all for Ireland. 
During the few weeks that elapsed between leav¬ 
ing school, passing into the Indian Civil Service 
‘and going out to Bombay to join his father—for all 
his relations upon either side had, for years, lived, 
and moved, and had their being in India, thought 
of the remainder of the world as a part of India, 
speaking of England as home, and yet never truly 
at home there—he had gone over to Ireland, stayed 
one night in Dublin, and spent the ten remaining 
days touring the west—in particular Mayo, the 
home of his father’s people. 

This visit did nothing to impair his romantic 
conception of the country. The inns were dirty 
and ill-found—but if one went to live in Ireland 
one would not live at an inn—and for the rest, the 
scenery and the bland airs were beyond all expecta¬ 
tion; while, needing nothing definite in the way 
of work or word, he found the people as seductive 
and soothing as their country. 

Throughout close upon thirty years in India this 
impression had grown, for a retrospect is always 
more or less exaggerated, one way or another. He 

2 6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


27 


had seen Greylands, which had been built by his 
great-grandfather, but once, going to lunch there 
with an almost incredibly old great-aunt, the last 
permanent inhabitant of the place, upon a still au¬ 
tumn day mellow with sunshine, mellow as the 
tongue of the ancient relative who had fed him 
upon traditionary tales of the full-blooded and 
magnificently extravagant O’Rorkes, one of whom, 
his great-great-uncle, had boasted that he could 
drive a coach and four through the streets of Castle- 
ford and break every shop-window at either side 
with his whip as he passed. 

It was this gentleman who, in the course of a 
drunken debauch, had burnt down the old house, 
himself with it, forestalling his future life in the 
same way as he forestalled everything else. 

As it was impossible to think of any head of the 
O’Rorke family without “a place” of his own to 
live in, the brother of the deceased, Standish 
O’Rorke—heir to wind and water and but little 
else—built the new house upon the old site; in a 
hurry, for he hated to be kept waiting, and badly, 
with poor material, owing to his shortage of credit 
and total lack of ready money. 

Upon his death, his only son, also a Standish, 
and Philip Rorke’s grandfather, taking possession 
of the few valuables which remained to the family, 
turned over the heavily mortgaged estate to his 
sister—with a tear in his eye, a noble gesture of 
relinquishment—as her share of the inheritance; 
and then, sloughing the black mud of Ireland from 



28 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


off his feet, betook himself to India, where, having 
married the only child of one of the richest mem¬ 
bers of the old East India Company, he established a 
family which, while regarding the native proper as 
a creature totally apart and not altogether human, 
never so much as dreaming of the faintest encroach¬ 
ment upon his part, was yet more completely, in 
pomp, outlook, tradition and sense of value, native 
to India than to any other country in the world: 
presenting that curious anomaly, more common in 
those days than in these, of a strange people in a 
strange country far more settled and at home, far 
more confident of their position, and of far greater 
importance, than they could ever have been in their 
own. 

It was in India that Philip Rorke’s father and 
uncles and aunts were born, brought up and eduv 
cated; it was there that his father married, visiting 
England—and it was nothing more than a visit, 
for the first and last time, upon his honeymoon trip, 
with a bride as completely Anglo-Indian as himself; 
while it was there that Philip himself was born, 
preceded by two brothers, both of whom died during 
the first years of their teens, a calamity which, 
likely enough, brought his parents to the point of 
sending him, the last born and only surviving child, 
home to school in England at the age of twelve. 

Young Rorke had not liked England, or the ways 
of English people in their own country. The first 
real warmth of feeling or affection he met with was 
in Ireland six years later, and he never forgot 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


29 


either it or the country which produced it—or some¬ 
thing so like as to pass for it: “Sure, yer honour; 
it’s a sight for sore eyes to see one o’ the old family 
back about the place again”; “Sure, yer honour, but 
an O Rorke’s welcome as the flowers in May to all 
that we can ever give him—little enough at that”; 
“Sure, it’s proud we are to see one o’ the old stock 
back here in these parts again, Miss Judy being no 
more than a female, an’ powerful old at that, small 
blame to her either, the body. A real lady if ever 
there was one!” 

The whole impression, so artfully borne in upon 
him—and yet for no particular end, merely that 
pleasant words came easy upon the tongue—of his 
own family, never very popular or of first impor¬ 
tance, being the only one worth considering in the 
whole county, or, for that matter, in Ireland itself, 
remained with him throughout all his years in 
India. 

And yet, despite all this, India got him and held 
him throughout the best of his life. It was there 
that he married at the age of thirty-eight, losing his 
wife less than two years later, only a few months 
after the birth of his daughter. 

Plenrietta stayed on in India with her father. 
There was a good deal of talk of sending her home, 
but here it ended, for there was no one in particular 
to send her to; and likely enough Philip Rorke—it 
was his grandfather who had dropped the O’ im¬ 
mediately upon his arrival, with the shrewd remark 
that everyone looked upon an Irishman as fair 


30 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


game—realised that he could ill endure the part¬ 
ing, being one of those unhappy characters consti¬ 
tutionally lonely, who lavish the whole of their af¬ 
fection upon one or at most two of their fellows; 
with no demonstration of feeling—rather with an 
odd sort of bitterness and self-contempt, as though 
this one soft spot were a weakness—a tendency to 
fault-finding, to hurting the thing they love as they 
would hurt nothing else in life. 

It was only upon those rare occasions when she 
was ill—and illness took her in the same silent, des¬ 
perate way as most of the joys and sorrows of life, 
so that if she were ill at all, she was as ill as anyone 
could well be—that the small girl realised, with a 
sense of almost awestruck wonder and delight, that 
her life was in any way precious to her father; 
while never, even if she had lived to an old woman, 
could she have forgotten one night, when, dragging 
herself out of a ghost-infected morass of fever, an 
almost unimaginable depth of darkness, horror, and 
stifling discomfort, she realised that her father was 
kneeling at her bedside, while the burning chip of 
a hand which he held pressed against his cheek was 
wet with tears. 

She never forgot, she never could have forgotten; 
and yet not for worlds would they either of them 
have spoken of it: he of his agony of apprehension, 
she of her joy and amazement, her sudden sense 
of occupying some quite definite place in the world. 

Years later, on the threshold of womanhood in 
India, the thought of it solaced her. “He did love 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3i 


me once, he must have loved me—that time when 
I was ill at Peshawar. He never showed it then, 
never, never when I was well. Perhaps if I were 
ill now, perhaps—perhaps . . 

But she never was ill again; nature never even 
gave her that much of oblivion to mental and spirit¬ 
ual suffering, having shut her up, as it were, in 
one of the most completely healthy bodies well 
imaginable. 

She never knew what it was to be called by any 
sort of pet name or diminutive. From the time 
when, still the merest baby, she outgrew her ayah’s 
blandishment, setting a mild and unvarying line of 
conduct and tone of voice—modelled upon her 
father’s rather judicial patience—between herself 
and her native attendant, she scarcely knew what it 
was to be caressed; even the English ladies in the 
stations—which they visited but rarely, for her 
father’s work lay for the most part in the wilder 
regions among a purely native population—took lit¬ 
tle notice of her after the first advances. For grave 
and a little judicial too, with her great hazel eyes, 
disconcertingly sincere, she was not the sort of 
child one could show off to, impress with the idea 
of how nice it would be to have a new mamma, 
and, by impressing her, impress her father; nor 
was she of the kind which naturally finds harbour¬ 
age upon almost any sort of motherly bosom, merg¬ 
ing itself with another family—gravitating towards 
creatures of her own age and kind. 

Rorke was an upright man in mind and body, 



32 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


outwardly stiff and cold, with an almost inhuman 
sense of duty; unpopular as all such men are. And 
in many ways his daughter by nature and upbring¬ 
ing was the same stuff. In her there was a blend¬ 
ing of the mysticism and controlled passion of her 
mother’s people, who had come from the Scotch 
Highlands: a passion and mysticism so much deeper 
than, and so infinitely further removed from, any 
easy outlet of words such as that which is afforded 
to the Irish. 

It would have taken something in the form of a 
cataclysm for either of the Rorkes to let them¬ 
selves go completely; not because they deliberately 
held themselves in, rather that any expression of 
emotion, any show of feeling, was so difficult. 
When it did come it was like the bursting of a 
dam, and here the difference between Henrietta and 
her father was this: the catastrophe the greater in 
that she held so much more, so infinitely much more 
than he did, some of the well-spring of life having 
run dry since those first enchanted days in Ireland. 

Ah! There you have it: the futility of this “com¬ 
ing back,” everything unchanged, and yet oneself 
so changed that all is changed; while, this time, 
Rorke had come back to live; must look upon the 
place, whether he wished to or not, with the apprais¬ 
ing eye of a possessor. There was a great deal to 
be done, and he wished it finished with, quickly and 
well, as he would have had it done in India, for he 
had the knack of handling natives—though not, 
alas! the natives of Ireland. Moreover, though 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


33 


by no means a poor man, he hated waste and idle¬ 
ness. That man O’Shaunessy, for instance. Why 
should the O’Shaunessys, who boasted of being 
“warm," have lived rent free for generations past? 
It was against all reason; they must see reason, 
they must listen to reason. So he thought, uncon¬ 
scious of the fact that he might as well have tried to 
stem the tides, force the river to flow up-hill instead 
of down, as expect any such thing. 

Set these two where they chose to set them¬ 
selves, or, rather, where the elder of the two, im¬ 
pelled by the romantic spirit which turns reason out 
of its course, had chosen that they should be set, 
among the O’Haras and their kind—for they, all 
question of breeding apart, were native to the soil 
as the veriest peasant—and some sort of tragedy be¬ 
comes inevitable; not for those that deserve least, 
but for those that feel most. 

Little Henrietta Rorke moved down the field to¬ 
wards the aggressors upon her father’s property with 
that sort of stiff dignity so natural to a child brought 
up in the way in which she had been brought up— 
never to display any sort of embarrassment, to de¬ 
pend upon her own judgment and upon herself. 

It was a little difficult, because the aggressors in 
this case were white, and she was not accustomed to 
white people of the lower class, as these must be, 
or they would not be behaving as they were; nor 
was she accustomed to young people. For all that, 
it never entered her head to let them be, or to call 
upon her father for support; she was mistress in 


34 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


her own house, upon her own land, as she had been 
in their most permanent resting-place, fifty miles 
out from Karachi. 

Honora had turned over again and lay facing 
her; the two boys squatted like imps of malice wait¬ 
ing to see what she would do; even Denise was 
awake and smiling. 

“You’ve no business here,” said Henrietta. She 
had given up all that undignified shouting and did 
not speak until she was level with them: “It’s pri¬ 
vate property and you’re poaching.” Her glance 
was direct and grave, though not entirely easy, for 
here was something that puzzled her. The poachers 
were not altogether what she had expected, though 
in what way she could not have said; impossible to 
be much more untidy and shabby, more inconse- 
quently of the vagabond type. 

With a quick, supple movement Honora drew 
herself up and round, squatting like a tailor, and 
faced her accuser, her blue eyes twinkling, her small 
vivid face—carnation and white, set in a tangle of 
blue-black hair—alive with mirth. 

“Poaching, are we? You don’t say so! Who’d 
have thought it?” 

“That—that—” Henrietta hesitated, then 
pointed, having no idea whether the figure in the 
water was that of a boy or girl—“that one in the 
river has no business fishing there—these are pri¬ 
vate waters.” 

“Pull it out,” put in Denise lazily, then added: 
“ Tt’ sounds like a tooth,” which sent the boys off 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


35 

into a peal of uncontrollable laughter, rolling over 
with their hands to their sides. 

“You none of you have any business here; we 
won’t have tramps here,” persisted Henrietta, tense 
and white, for she had never before known what 
it was to be laughed at. 

“Tramps, indeed!” flared Gerry, and flung to 
his feet, his small freckled face crimson. “Look 
here, you kid, who the devil do you think you’re 
speaking to—who the devil do you think you are, 
anyway? As if we were blackies! Don’t you go 
getting it into your precious head that just because 
you’re all togged up in white you’re God Almighty 
Himself—” 

“Shut up, Gerry!” interposed Honora, but he ran 
on with: 

“Oh, we’ve heard about you, we have; poking in 
here in Ireland where no one wants you, turning 
people out of their farms that were there before 
you were even thought of—you Rorkes, as you 
call yourselves! Caw—caw! Chucking poor old 
Biddy Ryan and her husband into the high road. 
Talk o’ pigs, begob, it’s you people that are—” 

“Shut up, I tell you, Gerry!” 

“Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Rooting up everything 
with your beastly old—” 

“Gerry!” screamed Honora again; then, as he 
went on, picked up a clod of grass and mud and 
threw it, missing the delinquent and hitting little 
Henrietta Rorke full in the face. 

“Good Lord!” Miss O’Hara scrambled to her feet 


36 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


in dismay, her face crimson; the boys ceased their 
laughter. In a moment there would have been all 
sorts of protestations and apologies, for the tribe 
was nothing if not generous, ready to admit a fault 
with no special burden of amendment on their con¬ 
science; Gerry, indeed, was already stuttering, the 
ready tears in his eyes, when the whole tide turned 
afresh with a shout from Teddy, desperately brac¬ 
ing herself against the rush of water, the run of a 
salmon, her rod almost double, reeling for dear life. 

“The gaff, you fools! You idiots! The gaff, I 
tell you—the gaff!” 

They were down the bank at that—all excepting 
Denise, who rolled over and lay down upon the edge 
—Gerry first, with the gaff, wading out to his sister, 
the water up to his waist; the others half in, half 
out of the water, dancing up and down upon the 
margin, screaming instructions: 

“Let him run, let him run, you idiot!” 

“Give him line—play him, play him!” 

“You’ll break your line—he’s not half done!” 

“Now, now—quick!” 

“Give him more line!” 

“No, no, no, get him—get him now!” 

“Oh, get him—get him, you idiot, get him! . . . 
O-o-oh, Gerry, Gerry, you fool, you ninny, you!” 
This as the small boy missed his footing and floun¬ 
dered head foremost into the water. “You’ll lose 
him—you’ll lose him—oh, you young ass!” 

“Mother of God, she’s lost him!” 

“There—there, Gerry! Quick, Gerry! Well 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


37 

done, Gerry—Gerry, you fool—you idiot! . . . Oh, 
the fool!” 

“No, he’s got him—begorra, he’s got him!” 

“Hold on, Teddy—hold on! Give him more line 
—a taste more line!” 

“See him leap—a ten-pounder, I bet you! . . . 
Fourteen pounds—I bet you anything! . . . Oh, 
golly!” 

“Now—now.” 

Henrietta Rorke, one side of her face blackened 
with the soil which trickled down her neck and into 
the bosom of her frock, her head swimming, her 
ears ringing, felt herself possessed by such an access 
of fury as in itself scared her. She stood for a 
moment trembling from head to foot—forgotten 
by the uproarious crowd at the water’s edge; then 
stooped, and fumbling for a stone, without in the 
least knowing what she was doing, threw it, badly 
enough, so that it splashed into the river half a 
dozen yards below the O’Haras; picked up another 
and threw again, intoxicated by a wild ardour of 
battle, and by some chance but just missed Teddy 
O’Hara’s head. 

She was stooping again, grubbing in the mud for 
another stone, when someone caught at her arm: 

“I say, look here, no stones, you know! Cad’s 
trick, that!” 

She jerked herself upright and flung round. 
“They—they—” she began; then broke off as the 
strange boy who held her dropped her arm and 
scrambling down the bank, began shouting with the 


3 « 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


others: “Play him, give him line, you juggins! 
Teddy! Now, Gerry, now, now, young Gerry! . . . 
You ass, Gerry, you scum, you! Now—now!— 
Gad! You’ve got him! Well done, you—well 
done for a kid! . . . Cheero, Teddy!” 

“Ronny! Hullo, Ronny! How did you get 
here? Ronny, by all that’s holy! We thought—” 

“Turns a stone if it’s an ounce. . . . Look here, 
I say, Ronny—” 

Henrietta Rorke put her hands up to her eyes, 
gritty with soil. She was choking with sobs, which 
tore her small chest, but she wouldn’t cry—she 
wouldn’t—she wouldn’t, not for anything on earth, 
not if she died for it! 

The sobs became audible, she couldn’t keep them 
back, though by some immeasurable effort of will 
the tears still lay, flooding her eyes, without falling. 
If she had stooped it would have all been over; but 
she daren’t stoop, and held her head high, 
overcome by defeat. Beaten—beaten! And not 
only by these hooligans, these trespassers and 
poachers, who were somehow and mysteriously not 
altogether tramps, but by something more dread¬ 
ful in herself; something which had robbed her of 
all self-control, driving her to stone-throwing— 
stone-throwing like a native! 

And what was that she had shouted at the big 
girl as the clod hit her—lapsing into the native 
vernacular, shouting, throwing like a sweeper. 

Where some would have burnt, crimsoned, she 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


39 


felt herself stiff and cold with shame, as cold as 
though her limbs had been dipped in icy water. 
Moving away from the scene of her defeat, she 
stumbled a little, for her chin was still in the air, 
the tears level, like lakes in her eyes. 

She heard someone calling, but she would not 
turn, dare not turn. Her home seemed endlessly 
far away, a life’s journey, taking at its shortest, 
cutting diagonally across the fatal field. She would 
have given the whole world to be safe in her own 
room, her head buried in her pillows, but she would 
not run, must not let herself run—running away— 
everything was bad enough without that. 

There was a sound of footsteps behind her and 
someone caught at her arm again: “I say, look 
here, what’s wrong? Who the—have they been 
ragging you?” 

She turned at this, her slight little figure stiff as a 
ramrod: there was a blur of violently green grass, 
blue sky, and blinding sunshine in her swimming 
eyes; mingled with it all was a boy’s face, flushed 
with the heat, brilliantly coloured with crimson lips, 
sparkling blue eyes. The whole impression of this 
face—at once long and wide at the cheek-bone, the 
wide, full-lipped mouth, the high and not very broad 
forehead glistening with moisture, the thick dark 
hair pushed back from it—swum above her like a 
mirage: and yet more vivid than anything in life 
had ever been before, amazing in its colouring to 
anyone used to the blanched tint of the Anglo- 


40 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Indian as she was; though far more arresting, more 
wonderful, was the sense that here at last was some¬ 
thing peculiarly her own. 

All this was the more amazing in that, to the boy 
also—fatally volatile as he was—that first im¬ 
pression remained; at first a joy, then half-fearful, 
exasperating, haunting: the clear-cut impression of 
hazel eyes like a willow-shaded pool, long black 
lashes, a small oval face white as paper, a delicately 
curved, trembling mouth. He realised it all the 
more because, even then, though not yet sixteen, 
there was nothing he missed in the points of a girl, a 
woman, or a horse. This child was beautifully 
made: he had noticed the slim, erect figure in the 
straight white serge frock with the red patent 
leather belt, the turn of her ankle as he followed 
her up the field. But with him also there was 
more to it than this, something that he never 
altogether lost hold of: something which kept him 
for ever remembering Henrietta Rorke when he 
least wished it: something which kept her for ever 
cropping up in his errant memory, belittling other 
women; something which would never—excepting 
for a few hours at a time—allow him to be alto¬ 
gether free of her. 

“They—they—” she began passionately, and 
was about to add, “threw mud at me,” when some¬ 
thing drew her up with the sharp reminder that she 
must not tell tales. 

“People have no business poaching/’ She sub¬ 
stituted this with dignity, her face raised to his; for 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


4i 


by this means alone could the tears be held back. 

“Rotten! Oh, I say, how beastly rotten of 
them!” He was for once ashamed of his family. 
Someone had “chucked a clod”; he had gathered as 
much while they measured the salmon; hitting the 
“kid from Greylands.” 

“Look here, Pm awfully sorry if they’ve heen 
ragging you." He was furious; there was Honora, 
nearly three years older than he was. Honora 
ought to have known better. As always when he 
first got home from Eton, he saw things from the 
Eton and the non-Irish point of view. Why 
couldn’t they behave properly, poaching, going about 
like a lot of tramps; what was old Gertie think¬ 
ing of? 

“It doesn’t matter,’’ began Henrietta bravely; 
“they’re nothing but—’’ “gipsies," she was going 
to say, then broke off, for after all she could not 
place them; any more than she could place this tall 
boy, with his immaculate light grey tweed suit, white 
collar and dark blue knitted silk tie, his quick cour¬ 
tesy and kindness, in contrast to those others, who 
now stood hesitating rather awkwardly upon the 
bank of the river. 

“Look here,” the boy spoke quickly, eagerly, 
“you’re Miss Rorke, aren’t you?" That “Miss 
Rorke” soothed her as nothing else could have done. 
“Then we’re near neighbours," he went on, as she 
nodded, “and I most awfully hope we’ll be friends. 
My name’s Shaen—Ronny they call me; and that 
other lot—really they’re not half bad—are my 


42 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


brothers and sisters. Look here—oh, I say!” He 
flushed crimson as Henrietta, bending her head be¬ 
neath his ardent eyes, felt the tears flood down her 
cheeks and fumbled for her handkerchief. 

“Look here, for goodness’ sake don’t do> that; 
they’re not worth it.” He found his own hand¬ 
kerchief—cleaner than it would ever again be until 
the last day of the holidays—and pressed it upon 
her. “They didn’t mean anything, they’re really all 
right, only they make such confounded asses of 
themselves; and—well, the fact is,” he gave a half 
awkward laugh, “we’ve all regarded it as a sort of 
point of honour to poach. Look here, I’ll call them 
up now and make them apologise like blazes.” 

“No, no, no!” She was overcome by an agony 
of shyness, but he had slipped a hand through her 
arm and held it as he called them up to him with an 
odd, lordly air; Honora, with her great black plait 
swinging below her waist; Teddy, dripping wet, 
staggering in her heavy waders; the two small boys 
momentarily awed by their brother’s disapproba¬ 
tion; Gerry with the salmon laid like a baby across 
his arm; Denise last, trailing along plaiting her 
hair. 

Shaen introduced each by their name; he had 
Gerry by the ear: “If I catch you behaving like a 
cad again, by Gad, I’ll skin you alive.” 

They were all extremely friendly, so friendly that 
Henrietta felt as though she had been spun round 
and round, come to herself in a giddy maze—certain 
of nothing apart from the touch of the tall boy’s 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—'. 


43 


hand upon her arm. They wanted her to go home 
to tea with them, to stay to dinner, to stay alto¬ 
gether. “There are any amount of spare rooms; 
much more fun with us than stuck down here alone.” 
There seemed, indeed, nothing that they would not 
have done; and yet not as a make-up, not that they 
were in the remotest degree ashamed of the way 
in which they had behaved; the only reference to it 
indeed was Gerry’s mute, half-mocking offer of 
the salmon, at which they all laughed: “Like John 
the Baptist’s head on the what’s-its-name.” 

“Why in the world that clod hit you instead of 
Gerry, that’s what beats me. The cussedness of 
it!” remarked Honora, with a sort of naif wonder. 

“Girls can’t throw for nuts!” 

“Oh, can’t they—can’t they?” 

The talk merged into a discussion, with examples 
of the whole art of throwing—“Girls always throw 
like this, always!”—then ran off into a flood of 
questions in regard to their brother’s sudden appear¬ 
ance. 

“But there’s no train at all. We were going 
on the car to meet the five-thirty. Joyce was tak¬ 
ing the game-cart for your luggage. How the 
blazes—” 

“I went on to Ballymacdaugh Junction in the ex¬ 
press, then took a special back to Castleford.” 

“What!” Even they were aghast at that. 
“What! You never, you never! Ronny! Ronny! 
You must be mad!” 

“The governor sent me twenty quid for my birth- 


44 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


day; it only turned up the morning I left Eton. 
I couldn’t blow it there. Anyhow . . . Oh, well, it 
was worth it: you should have seen old Brady's 
face when I got out at Castle ford. Such a lark 
rattling along all alone in my glory—not really alone 
though, for I came in the guard’s van and swopped 
yarns with him.” 

“A special—a special! You’re mad!” 

“You’re mad, that’s what you are, mad! My 
word, only to think what we might have done with 
the money!” 

“You! I like that—you!” It seemed that they 
had almost forgotten Henrietta Rorke, all excepting 
this big boy, the boy who had told her that his 
name was Shaen, and whom they called Ronny. 
And this was as confusing as everything else about 
them. If his name was Shaen, Ronny Shaen, who 
were these others whom he spoke of as his brothers 
and sisters: “All we O’Haras,” Teddy had said 
boastingly, “all we O’Haras poach like blazes.” 

“It must be tea-time.” 

“My back’s rubbing against my front.” 

“And only the mingiest sandwiches—that Brigid 
thing's as mean as mean—since breakfast.” 

“Did you have any lunch, Ronny?’’ 

“Rather!—ran pretty well the whole way here to 
shake it down!” 

He had not forgotten Henrietta; his hand had 
slipped from her arm to her shoulder, then to her 
neck, lying warm under the mane of brown hair. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


4 # 

“Come along—-come along!” 

“If she won’t have the salmon we’ll make that 
old beast Brigid cook it for schoolroom supper.” 

“You’d better come too—you—what’s your name 
—Greylands’ kid?” 

They were straggling off in the direction of 
Clonross, friendly but indifferent. “Why don’t 
you come?—do come; I’ll drive you home in the 
car.” It was the big boy who pleaded with her, 
really wanted her. “Have you ever been on an 
outside car? I’ve got a spanking little mare of my 
own. Come along, I say, do come!” 

“No, no—no!” 

“But you’ll come another time—you must. 
We’re going to be friends, you know—tremendous 
friends! Promise me that, promise—you’ll come 
another time?” 

She looked up at him, her whole soul in her 
eyes, so plain to see that young Shaen was struck 
with the feeling of being up against something he 
did not understand; but she did not speak, only 
nodded, her tremulous lips tight set. 

“Well, anyhow, I shall come over and see you, 
so there!” 

She nodded again, with another long intent 
gaze; then broke from his hand and turned away, 
leaving him with that oddly baulked sense of being 
out of his depth; wondering what she really thought 
and meant, and how—and this was strangest of all 
—how he himself struck her. Though, of course, 


46 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


with those others behaving as they had done, it was 
little wonder if she was off the lot of them, “the 
young fools!” he thought angrily. 

“Come along, Ronny, buck up, Ronny!” They 
had moved away, all excepting the mute Derrick, 
who still hung close to his brother. 

Henrietta did not look back nor wave, did not 
hesitate, walked straight on. Shaen had never seen 
such a girl and yet, somehow or other, they were 
friends. He liked her most awfully, he decided: 
there was something about her, something he 
couldn’t get at. Anyhow, it was no good just 
standing gorming there, letting her go in that way, 
and he ran after her. 

“Look here, what do you want to go off like that 
for? I don’t even know your name. I can’t call 
you Miss Rorke if we’re to be pals.” 

“My name’s Henrietta.” 

For a moment he was taken aback. “Lord, what 
a mouthful! But they don’t call you that?” 

“Yes—of course.” She flushed, hating that he 
should find anything that he did not like about her. 

“Well, I shan’t anyhow—Henrietta—Henry— 
Harry. . . . Look here, I say, I shall call you 
Harry. . . . No, I won’t, I’ll call you Hal—Hal, 
may I, do you mind awfully?” 

“Of course not.” 

“Then—good-bye, Hal—dear Hal.” He glanced 
back, saw that the others, apart from Derrick, were 
well away, with their backs to him, and catching up 
her hand, held it to his cheek and kissed it. “I’ll 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


47 


come to-morrow—don’t forget; you mustn’t ever 
forget,” he whispered; then, as she turned away 
again, rejoined his small brother, clouting him 
genially over the head. 

“Do you ever open your mouth excepting to put 
something into it, eh, you young blighter, you?” 

“Not often.” 

“Well, don’t: see here, don’t, that’s all I’ve got 
to say.” 

They strolled on, Derrick just a step behind, as he 
always was, aglow with a sense of pride at being 
somehow or other in his big brother’s confidence. 

As to Shaen, he glanced round again and again at 
the small white figure moving diagonally along the 
narrow field, through a gate into another field at 
the end of it, and up some steps in the sunk 
fence on the lawn. Was she never going to turn, 
never—the queer little thing! He felt unaccount¬ 
ably stirred. Only a kid, too—he to be upset by 
a kid like that, feeling all anyhow; he who had 
danced with, made a sort of love to, women—mar¬ 
ried women at that. He could have shaken her, 
the perverse little wretch! 

Almost at the door she turned; there was a mass 
of blackish ilex behind her, and he could see her 
wave a tiny hand, pale as a wind-shaken willow leaf 
against the darkness. 

“She’s like a mermaid,” said Derrick. 

Shaen was silent; she was at the side door by 
now—would she turn again—would she? Queer 
how his heart was going, very fast, pounding, then 


48 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


stopping as she stopped; pounding on again and 
falling back into an accustomed dull sluggishness 
as she disappeared into the house. 

For a moment or so he and his younger brother 
moved on in silence, Shaen making the pace, hurry¬ 
ing where he had dawdled; then, remembering what 
the other had said, he turned his head over one 
shoulder and stared at Derrick. 

“A mermaid—what the devil! Why, mermaids 
have tails, you young ass!” 

“Not that, of course—anyone can see that.” 

“Oh no, merely a rumour! Mad! You’re all 
mad!” 

“All the same—of course I think she’s awfully 
pretty—for a girl; but something, you know, like a 
mermaid about her eyes; sorter sad, like that bitch 
of Fred Joyce’s. And—oh, I don’t know—a sorter 
under-the-water look.” 

“Ass! You don’t often open your mouth, young 
Derrick, but when you do, you jolly well put your 
foot into it,” jeered Shaen, and swung on whistling, 
slashing at the tall growth at the edge of the road 
with his stick. It never did to let a kid know that 
you agreed with him, and yet—and yet—“mermaid’s 
eyes—sorter under-the-water look.” 

There was something in it, he thought, and made 
up his mind that he would make use of the fancy as 
his own, next day: riding over to show her his 
horse, himself upon it, cheer up the poor kid. It 
must be pretty dull there in that dreary, half-empty 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


49 


house, he thought; for to Lord Shaen, with his 
youthful arrogance, any home devoid of his own 
particular contemporaries and types was counted as 
a prison. 


CHAPTER IV 


Henrietta was late for tea. It was her own 
peculiar duty and pleasure to pour out tea for her 
father; her whole life was, indeed, set round with 
the small, grave duties of a woman, punctually at¬ 
tended to. And yet, on this particular afternoon, 
knowing the hour as she did, she passed through 
the long hall with that damp, frowsty smell, which 
she associated with pretty well all the houses “at 
home”—a bare, ugly, badly-lighted place, divided 
up by pillars of artificial marble, the walls cut into 
recesses, all alike occupied by broken-nosed, blank¬ 
eyed busts poised on more sham marble pillars— 
and up to her own room, facing west at an angle 
over the stable yard. Nothing frowsty here, but a 
magnolia tree in full bloom drenching the sun- 
soaked air with perfume. 

Her old dolls’ house still stood outside the back 
door. It had been brought from India because she 
could not bear to part with it, for though even there, 
with their constant moves, it had spent most of 
its time in store, it had always been something to 
come back to; more, had stood for home itself. 
For, somehow or other, the homeless child’s imagi¬ 
nation had fitted Greylands—of which her father 

spoke with that air of slighting indifference which 

50 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


5i 


he gave everything in which his feelings were in¬ 
volved—to an enlarged scale of the prim, Queen 
Anne villa, attractive to her childish mind because 
of its very difference to, its neatness in comparison 
with, the houses to which she was accustomed. 

She knew now that she did not really care for it, 
that its glamour was all gone; and suddenly, in the 
midst of the maze of happiness which flooded her—* 
the slighting thought that they might be glad to 
have the stupid old thing at some hospital or other 
—she was overcome by a sense of that pain and 
loss which comes with the realisation of something 
or somebody outgrown: a feeling of blank loneliness 
such as might overwhelm one upon opening the 
door of a room where one has made certain, cer¬ 
tain sure, of dim lights, a fire, companions, laugh¬ 
ter, and found it empty, stripped: with echoing bare 
boards, ash-bestrewn grate, the teasing rattle of 
mice in the wainscot. 

Poor old dolls’ house! Poor old thing! she 
thought, feeling that it was hard to be outgrown 
like that for no fault of one’s own. For this was 
what happened; reproach herself as she might— 
and it her hurt her loyalty—she had outgrown it, 
as in reality, only she had kept on pretending, she 
had long ago outgrown the doll which she had 
brought away too, because it seemed unkind to leave 
it behind—or so she had told herself. 

She looked at it now, propped up on a table in 
one corner of her room, staring in front of it with 
a queer air of amazement and outrage, a look of 


S 2 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


being completely taken aback in its wide blue eyes, 
its once pink cheeks faded with the vicissitudes of 
travel and climate. 

For a moment Henrietta gazed at it with a sort of 
contempt—a contempt that was not for the doll, 
but for herself. To think that she had ever cher¬ 
ished such an object! Then, overcome by the 
dumb appeal of the thing, by her own need to lavish 
affection upon something if not someone, she moved 
across the room, picked it up, and hugged it to her 
breast, shaken by a feeling which she could not have 
put in words. 

The next moment she knelt down, and, pulling 
open the bottom drawer of a large bureau in which 
all her odds and ends of treasures for which there 
was no particular place or use had been laid, took 
a roll of embroidered silk, all birds and butterflies 
and lotus-blooms, from out of its folds of tissue 
paper, and unwrapping the doll, rolled it all up 
again and placed the whole thing at the very back 
of the drawer. 

When she went down she found her father with 
the tea-things pushed to one side of the table and a 
mass of papers laid out in front of him; for they 
were camping in an uncomfortable sort of way in 
the dining-room, vaguely uneasy in and uncertain 
what to make of the chill, faded drawing-room; 
with its ghostlike atmosphere, its sweet, frowsty 
perfume of old ladies; its spindly chairs and un¬ 
necessary tables; its desert of pale-tinted carpet, the 
pile worn grey in certain places where long-dead feet 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


53 


had tapped and fidgeted in the front of accustomed 
seats, at a time when people had their own chairs, 
sat where they had always sat, kept their hands still, 
and tapped their feet beneath their flowing skirts. 

“Of course when I started writing, the ink-pot 
was thick with some sort of fluffy mess,” Mr. Rorke 
complained. “Can one ever get clean ink in this 
country, or do these strange creatures who pass 
for housemaids inevitably empty their dust-pans into 
the ink-pot? I got out some clean blotting-paper 
yesterday, too, but someone’s used it for soaking 
up tea or some such slop—born messers! I must 
tell Mardi not to let them touch any of my things. 
Don’t attempt to drink that tea, Henrietta; I sus¬ 
pect it’s what they’ve kept steaming on the kitchen 
stove since their own dinner-time.” 

“Oh, father, I’m so sorry! How stupid of them! 
And I’m late, I’m afraid.” 

“Oh, that’s all right.” He never worried nor 
questioned her; gave her the liberty of any 
grown-up and perfectly unrelated personage; but 
for all that, she saw him glance at her for a moment, 
almost curiously, with his peculiarly clear grey eyes, 
and answered the glance which—in his way of 
never expecting anything from anybody—was studi¬ 
ously devoid of demand. 

“There were some people, children and—and 
things”; she flushed, hesitated, and pulled herself 
together. Her father hated anything in the way 
of broken, sloppy talk, and yet there had been no 
real grown-up people in that party on the river- 


54 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


bank, no one—she was conscious of a certainty of 
this—so really and truly as grown-up as herself; 
though plainly enough Honora was, in point of 
years, far older, as tall and well developed as any 
woman, with the eyes of an indifferent infant; and 
even Denise no longer, outwardly, at least, alto¬ 
gether a child. “They were poaching on our 
part of the river; I went down to stop them.” 

“Oh.” She had her father’s full attention; but 
it was not for any precise information as to what 
had happened; she realised that he knew this al¬ 
ready, but rather for the way in which she had met 
a crisis that he waited, his pen in his hand. It was 
tragic to think how well she knew him, his thoughts, 
his standards, his every shade of feeling apart from 
that relating to herself. 

“Well, did you achieve your end?” 

“They caught a salmon first.” She crossed the 
room and rang for some fresh tea, mindful, with a 
sense of weariness, how often the people on board 
ship had impressed upon her that in England or 
Ireland one always had to be keeping the servants 
up to the mark. 

“Do you think they’ll try it on again?” There 
was a gleam of amusement on her father’s face. 
She would like to have answered with pride that 
they “would never dare,” but she couldn’t. 

“I think as long as they know they oughtn’t 
to—” she began slowly. “If we gave them per¬ 
mission, perhaps, very likely, they wouldn’t want 
to. It’s a long way.” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


55 


“Where did they come from?” 

“A place called Clonross.” 

“Gipsies—working-class children ? w 

“No—all ragged, but somehow different. A big 
boy came up later.” Henrietta paled a little, stiff¬ 
ened as she always did when she found it difficult 
to say anything, and ended in her father’s own non¬ 
committal manner : “Quite decently tidy.” 

Mardi had entered, stood waiting, and Mr. Rorke 
turned to him: “Do you know who lives at a 
place called Clonross?” 

“It belongs to the Lord Taghmony, sahib, him who 
is now out in Bombay. There are at home now 
his sons and his daughters and one mem sahib.” 

“What is their name?” 

“O’Hara, sahib.” 

“Oh, of course! There you have your rapscal¬ 
lions, Henrietta. The Taghmony lot.” 

“He—the big boy—said his name was Shaen, the 
others called him Ronny.” 

“The Lord Shaen,” put in Mardi. There was no 
bazaar here in this weary land where his master 
had chosen to plant himself, but for all that, it 
was part of his duty and pride to know everything 
about everybody, no matter how great the diffi¬ 
culties might be. “Him the Right Honourable 
Earl Shaen, eldest son of my Lord Taghmony.” 
“Oh . . ” 

Mardi hesitated; there was so much that he 
could tell, it seemed almost a waste to be with a 
master who was so little curious about his fellow- 


5 6 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

creature* in general ; for all that, he did not venture 
further. 

“The sahib rang?” 

“No, I rang,” put in Henrietta, with that sort of 
decision which threw the Irish servants into a state 
between hysterical laughter at “the knowingness o 
the cratur’ ” and open revolt. “I want some fresh 
tea: and the sahib says that his tea is not fit to drink, 
that it has been standing. You ought to know 
better than that, Mardi.” 

She spoke judicially and calmly; the management 
of servants had been a part of her daily life; one 
must be firm with inferiors, and yet never give 
oneself away, lose patience. That this same detach¬ 
ment and self-control did not hold good in every 
emergency was likely enough owing to the fact that 
in little Henrietta Rorke’s life there had been, so 
far, but little of the personal element of human emo¬ 
tion; or even more likely, that in some direction or 
other youth must be served, find its outlet; for it is 
impossible to encompass the whole of young life 
—its excitements, its passions, its ardours—within 
the narrow-ring fence of perfect behaviour. 

“The cook person,” explained Mardi with dignity, 
“is an uneducated and impossible-to-work-with 
woman. She prepares the tea herself; if I go to 
prepare the tea for the sahib she threatens to pour 
the boiling water over me, using such words as it 
is impossible to repeat.” 

“Well, bring some decent tea at once, and I my- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


57 

self will speak to the cook to-morrow,” said Henri¬ 
etta, calm and mistrustful of all excuses. 

Her father glanced at her curiously as the serv¬ 
ant left the room. What was she going to make 
of this new life, these new responsibilities? He was 
so used to her, had so completely expected her, as 
it were, to take up the role of a mature and self- 
sufficing womanhood, that he often failed to realise 
her as a child, small, and in appearance almost 
alarmingly fragile. He had seen the young 
O’Haras before, however; recognised them that 
afternoon; watched from an upper window their 
encounter with his daughter. A wild lot, “hope¬ 
lessly Irish’’—that was what he had said to himself 
—and yet with some element of youth, that careless¬ 
ness of youth, which was completely lacking in 
Henrietta. 

Almost for the first time in their full and 
engrossed life together he wondered if he had 
not, maybe, expected too much of her. Some¬ 
times, indeed, it had amazed him to look back and 
realise what a baby she had been when she first 
took so much upon her small shoulders; for how 
long it had been, “Now, Henrietta”—and always 
the complete name, no sort of diminutive or term 
of endearment—“I depend upon you.” And for 
how much, too, no end to the measure and scope of 
it: his pride, almost hobby, this—to try her to the 
utmost, sure of response. Six or seven years old 
and it was already her task to look after So-and-so; 


58 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


to keep an eye on such and such a thing while he 
was away; to let him know if anything went wrong 
—and, later, to keep it from going wrong—“Make 
them feel your hand over them.’’ She must be 
sure that any chance guest, who might arrive while 
he was from home, was properly entertained, given 
the right cigars, the right whisky; vigilant with an 
eye on the stables as well as the house, the corn¬ 
stealing proclivities of the syces, making sure that 
the ponies were properly exercised; while he had 
taken it for granted that she was entirely capable 
of all arrangements for meeting him with the entire 
retinue, a hundred miles or more away from home, 
at a day’s notice, all ready prepared for weeks in 
camp. 

Oh yes, he had tried her to the uttermost. In 
some ways it was involuntary; but not in all, for 
he liked to show her off by his show of indif¬ 
ference. “Oh, Henrietta's no fool,” he would say, 
when people dared to remonstrate with him. “A 
baby? She wouldn’t thank you for that. I never 
knew anyone more competent to look after herself 
and the rest of us too.” 

It had been a sort of boast, and he had never had 
a doubt about the rightness of it all until a couple 
of days earlier, when he had come across the whole 
O’Hara crew swarming over an outside car in one 
of the narrowest streets in Castleford, screaming 
instructions to one of their number inside a pastry¬ 
cook’s shop, flushed and excited, regardless of every¬ 
one apart from themselves. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


59 

“Real Irish,” and yet of the very essence of life 
and youth. 

He glanced at Henrietta sitting erect in her chair, 
her small white hands laid out along the arms, her 
clean-cut little face paler and graver than usual; for 
she was shutting back a host of strange new dreams, 
emotions, tremulous excitements. 

“It might be rather amusing for you to make 
friends with the Clonross children, eh, Henrietta? 
You need some friends of your own age. You’re 
an old-fashioned piece of goods, you know.” 

The delicate colour flushed up into her face as 
she rearranged the tray with careful fingers and 
began to pour out tea from the fresh pot that 
Mardi had just brought. 

“Well?—though of course it’s your own affair.” 
For once he was almost sharp with her; it struck 
him that she was a little slow, a little irresponsive, 
that—and here was irony indeed—there was at 
times an irritating lack of childish spontaneity about 
Henrietta. 

“I’m not very used to children.” For a moment 
she hesitated, her eyes downcast, her lips tightly 
folded; then, quite suddenly, she looked up at him 
with the first confession of being completely and 
pathetically at a loss that he had ever seen upon her 
face. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to talk 
to them about. I’ve never—you see, father, it’s 
like this: I never have had any other children to 
play with.” 

That look touched him, came back to him as they 


6o 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


sat at dinner that night—the two of them alone in 
the dining-room, with candles burning in the great 
branching silver candelabra, and stiff bouquets of 
flowers in cut-glass vases islanded upon the vast 
table, showing Mardi’s effort at the old tradition, 
while a half-undercooked, half-overdone meal dis¬ 
played the cook’s temper—so that he made the 
suggestion of taking her over to England with him. 
“I must go to London to buy some decent furni¬ 
ture, get them to send over some decorators.” 

“Couldn’t you find anyone in Dublin?” 

“My dear child, don’t you realise that it’s hope¬ 
less? Everything is hopeless in this country when 
you come down to wanting any job done, well done 
and finished out of hand. They can’t finish with 
anything—even a grudge—leave it clear cut, that’s 
what's wrong with them. I shall get some English 
servants over too; it’s impossible to go on in the 
messy way we’re doing now. You’d like to come, 
eh?” 

“I don’t know—I don’t think so, father, thank 
you very much. I—” She hesitated, at a loss 
for words, then wound up with: “I think I’d better 
go on getting used to it,'’ puzzled by this strange 
land where everyone wanted to do everyone else’s 
work, leaving their own undone—though there was, 
for all that, something warm and human about it. 

“If we could try them a little longer, perhaps I’d 
get to understand them better,” she said. 

“Henrietta''; her father put out his hands towards 
her, and getting up, she moved round the table to 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 61 

him, laid her own in it, the rarity of the advance 
leaving her dumb; while as for him, he could find 
nothing to say beyond the repetition of that little 
sentence which had somehow hurt her: “An old- 
fashioned piece of goods, that’s what you are, eh?” 


CHAPTER V 


Mr. rorke was away far longer than he had ex¬ 
pected, delayed by the fact that English methods 
were not, after all, so expeditious as his exaspera¬ 
tion with everything Irish had led him to expect; 
for beneath his outward patience lay the weakness 
of sudden despairs, a complete washing of hands. 

He had thought of Henrietta more, perhaps, than 
usual; thought, but not worried, for she was accus¬ 
tomed to looking after herself, being left alone. 
He found himself wondering if she really was too 
old for her age, if he had been wrong in some way 
in his methods of upbringing. “What she wants 
is more young companions,” he thought then, com¬ 
ing home, finding that his ideas had been met— 
more than met—half-way; was in some queer fash¬ 
ion, of which he himself felt ashamed, resentful, 
apprehensive for his own peace, his own place in the 
child’s affection. 

And yet it was upon this arrival home—with, 
for the very first time within his memory, no small, 
solitary figure watchful upon the doorstep—that— 
and here again, literally for the first time, or he 
could not otherwise have remembered it as he did 
with so large a measure of self-reproach—he heard 
Henrietta laugh as a child laughs, a wildly excited 
and joyous child. 


62 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 63 

Every window and apparently every door in the 
house—for he could hear their “bang, bang,” echo¬ 
ing through the entire building—was open as Rorke 
drove up to Greylands; passing along the folding 
loops of the drive, with glimpses of it given and 
snatched away again; making for the back door, 
for the sweep in the front had been newly metalled, 
and was, as yet, hopeless for a motor. 

Such glimpses as he caught of the front of the 
house showed it dead, not a workman in sight; the 
back, on the contrary, was all alive and blowing, 
so to speak, with three rosy-faced, untidy, capless 
servant girls, leaning as far as possible out of three 
separate upper windows, shrieking pleasantries to 
one of the painters, who lounged against the lintel 
of the back door, allowing himself to be served 
with refreshment and affection, exuberant blandish¬ 
ments, by the cook—a stout, red-haired woman who 
looked as though she had been giving what she her¬ 
self called “a taeste o’ a wipe ter the floor” with her 
own person. 

A disreputable jaunting-car, plastered with dry 
mud, stood in the yard, and a thin-skinned chestnut, 
hitched to a ring in the stable wall, kicked and 
fidgeted, tormented by flies; while a tattered figure 
in a long-waisted, fully-gored woman’s coat, seated 
upon the mounting-block, a polishing-brush in one 
hand, a brown riding-boot in the other, inter¬ 
mittently soothed the thoroughbred: “There, 
there, me darlint, don’t be afther mindin’ them 
bastes o’ flies, the devil’s own bastes they do be. . . . 


64 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Whoa, then, whoa—stheady on there!” and shouted 
hoarse encouragement to a couple of half-grown 
wire-haired terriers which, having dragged a small 
rug from a pile—likely enough brought out with 
the transitory idea of a beating, thrown down and 
forgotten—were whirling round and round, worry¬ 
ing it between them; while a stable lad, leaning 
over the lower half-door of the stable, looked on, 
grinning and smoking, taking his pipe from his 
mouth and squealing with delight, beating on the 
top of the door as the rug parted between the two. 

A waggon, still half laden with trusses of hay, 
stood beneath the open door of the loft, a velvet 
black square in a dazzling white wall; for the whole 
yard was flooded with sunshine, illuminating the 
scraps of paper which whirled in the wind, the 
shreds of blue and crimson wool scattered by the 
dogs with the rug; etching out the loose straws in 
lines of pure gold; gleaming on a pool of scummy 
water which lay in the middle where the grating of 
the drain was stopped. 

It was all light, colour, and noise. The white 
curtains flew pennant-fashion out of the windows, 
while the maids in their bright-coloured print gowns 
hung, like overblown blossoms, still further out 
over the sills, shrieking with a new note of admira¬ 
tion, excitement: 

“Ach, there now, look at him!” 

“Begorra, now look at him there!” 

“Mother o’ God, the limb! See that now!” 

“There—there now, did you ever set eyes on the 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


65 

like o that Patsy—Jimmy—see now, see there 
now !” 

“Bless us an’ save us! Cooky! Cooky! Look 
there now—a-ah! Sure, it’s destrowyed he’ll be!” 
The whole chorus rose in a shrill crescendo as a 
small boy leapt from the darkness of the loft door, 
snatched for the rope depending from a swivelled 
iron bracket at the angle of the roof above, caught 
it, and swung wildly for a moment—all legs like a 
spider—then steadied, dropped among the hay, 
scrambled over the edge of the cart, and raced like 
the wind across the yard, with another small boy, 
who had flashed out from the stable door, close upon 
his heels, diving under the cook’s arm and so into 
the back door. 

There was more laughter, more applause, inter¬ 
spersed with loud laments from the painter as an 
overturned tin of paint disgorged itself in a thick 
green stream round his feet. 

The whole thing, lost and caught up again by the 
loopings of the drive, set itself vividly in Rorke’s 
disgusted mind—so much as he did not seem to 
notice then he remembered later—all colour and 
noise and “commonness,” as he would have said; 
there it all was, at one moment, flashing and com¬ 
plete ; the next cut off, wiped out, as it were; nothing 
more than immobility, emptiness, blank silence left. 
The maids who had hung from the window van¬ 
ished so suddenly that one might have looked on 
the ground for the halves of them, snipped off at 
the waist; while the tattered effigy on the mounting- 


66 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


block—a wizened something between a young boy 
and an old, old man, senile decay and early child¬ 
hood—darted forward, picked up one riding-boot, 
upon which the puppies were now concentrating, 
cuffed them apart, tucked it under his coat, and 
stood ludicrously bobbing to the master, one fin¬ 
ger to his forelock, his slits of eyes darting from 
side to side in his spit of a face. 

“Fine dawgs, yer honour; the maekin’ o’ foine 
dawgs entirely is them two, savin’ yer presence, yer 
honour.” 

Rorke’s face was—they said later, whispering 
among themselves'—“like one o’ them there fine grey 
pennibs the quality uses,” as he pointed with his 
stick to the other boot, the rags and brushes on the 
mounting-block. 

“They’ll have those next,” he said; “take the boots 
indoors and clean them in their proper place.” 

“Yes, yer honour, for sure, yer honour.” Patsy, 
his ragged coat flapping, the collar up over the back 
of his head, ran, low and small, shambling across 
the yard, swept up his impedimenta and disappeared 
into the stables. The groom vanished; the painter 
was mounted upon his ladder, green paint dripping 
from the hem of his white trousers; while, with the 
bewildering effect of a stout body in a dirty mauve 
print, making itself “as thin as a rasher o’ wind,” 
the cook slid out of sight, the back door—as though 
in itself a conspirator—closing silently behind 
her. 

The next moment, however, it was flung wide 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 67 

again, and Mardi ran out with a gesture of despair¬ 
ing obeisance for his master. 

“Take these bags, and then see that the man has 
something to eat before he goes back/’ said Rorke, 
and stepping into the passage, he moved along it to 
the back hall, a wide whitewashed place, with bacon 
hooks along the beams and an immense table at 
which, in the good old days, all who pleased, work¬ 
men, beggars, poachers—likely enough with a hare 
or brace of trout in their pockets—could sit down 
to cold meat, bread and cheese and a “drap o’ sum- 
mut.” 

It was in passing through this to the inner, chilly 
front hall with its effigies—an incongruous medley, 
—Plato; a long-dead O’Rorke, once Chief Justice 
of Ireland; the Duke of Wellington and a peculiarly 
battered female figure labelled “Spring”—that he 
heard that laugh, at the end of a fusillade of slams; 
a cry of, “Caught—caught!” and then the laugh, 
wild with triumph. 

The next moment the door from the lobby at the 
foot of the stairway burst open, and the same small 
boy who had dropped from the loft shot through it, 
one arm torn from out his coat, one stocking down 
round his ankle, and Henrietta Rorke hanging on 
to him, whirling round with him. 

Henrietta! Henrietta! Eyes and cheeks ablaze, 
her hair in a tangled mass around her face, her 
blouse out of the back of her skirt, a hole in the 
heel of her stocking. 

They hurtled forward on to the floor together, 


68 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Henrietta on top, silent now—while the boy squealed 
and gurgled—presumably tickling him. Henri¬ 
etta ! Henrietta of all people! The name beat in a 
sharp staccato through Rorke's mind, punctuated 
with a fusillade of exclamation marks—and that 
alone shows how unaccustomed he was to any such 
display. 

It was the others, surging in upon them, that gave 
the alarm; for alarm it was—and here was another 
rub. Rorke himself had, often enough, called 
“Cave!” at the sight of his parents, but that Henri¬ 
etta should be alive to like alarms—this was too 
much! Henrietta whom he had never even at¬ 
tempted to curb, pathetically enough because she 
did not need it! 

“I say—oh, I say—Hal!” 

It was a tall girl who gave tongue, almost a 
woman, with a swinging black plait. The rest of 
them were there, flushed and dishevelled—youth as 
he had admired it in the streets of Castleford, a 
little sour to the taste here in his own house; not 
altogether—any part of it, combined with that scene 
in the back-yard—a pleasing welcome for a tired 
and fastidious man. 

All the same, what pleased him least, what really 
hurt him, was his daughter’s sudden jerk back to 
her old self; he liked her best that way, but he did 
not like her to be that way because of him—this 
was the fact, altogether unreasonable. 

“We were playing,” she said lamely. Hang it 
all, what else could she have been doing? thought 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


69 

Rorke; and were these others meant to think that 
she was not allowed to play, making him out a 
household tyrant? 

“So I perceive.” His voice was like ice. “But 
won’t you introduce me to your friends?” 

She began with the tall girl, leaving the eldest 
boy—almost a man and the most distinguished- 
looking of the whole oddly distinguished crew—to 
the last; and yet, even in the midst of this break¬ 
ing off to wail: 

“I didn’t know you were coming; oh, father, if 
only I had known you were coiming!” cutting him 
deep with the sense of an ill-timed arrival, when all 
she thought of was his writing-table without its 
usual vase of flowers; the unreadiness of the serv¬ 
ants; her own dreadful omission—aye, and loss 
too—in not being at the door to meet him; all this 
combined with a desperate impatience to be rid of 
these others so that she might minister to him, lay 
herself out to please, practise her household art. 
Why, his bedroom was all anyhow; she .had seen 
it that morning and spoken about it; but speaking 
once was no good at all, nothing more than a prelude 
to standing over Mary the housemaid, seeing the 
thing done. 

That was all, her one preoccupation, while the 
memory of having invited the O’Hara party to 
stay to tea lay heavy upon her. But it is this sort 
of misapprehension, this web of misunderstanding, 
which is so fatal, so hopelessly entangling to people 
—people of a certain proud and sensitive type— 


70 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

who are unfortunate enough to be fond of one an¬ 
other. 

Rorke shook hands all round; later on at tea 
Honora declared that he gave her two fingers, no 
more. All the CfHara children, adoring their own 
parents, criticised them as they criticised themselves, 
and could have had no idea of the wave of resent¬ 
ment which swept over Henrietta at Honora’s 
words. 

Anyhow, the afternoon was, somehow or other, 
spoilt. It was the first time Henrietta had really un¬ 
bent, and now she was up again, straight as an 
osier; terribly polite, terribly much the hostess; al¬ 
together too much for her guests, with no idea of 
how desperately hard she was trying to do her duty; 
keeping it up to the very end—even to going out 
with them to the car, watching them harness the 
chestnut, seeing them off, waving her hand as they 
looped their way down the drive. Take it all in all, 
though, it was little wonder they could not under¬ 
stand such complications, for if they had wanted 
to get rid of anyone—above all, kids like them¬ 
selves—there was nothing simpler than to say so: 
“Look here, you young ’un, you, you hook it!” add¬ 
ing by way of a frill: “Pm about fed up with 
you,” or any little thing like that, just to round it off. 

Shaen was riding; by the time the others were 
gone, and she went out into the loose box to see him 
saddle his mare, Henrietta was white as paper, 
physically cold with impotence and depression. 

“Look here, is he rotten to you?” said Shaen. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


7i 


“Don’t you mind him if he is; parents are the limit 
sometimes, though mine are decent enough, IT 1 say 
that for them. But, by Jove, if he bullies you—” 

“Father! Why, he’s the best father in the world; 
he lets me do anything I like—there was never any¬ 
one like him—never—never! How dare you! I— 
I—” 

Henrietta was all aflame, realising for the first 
time that there was something that they did miss 
between them, her father and herself. 

Shaen had made an altogether false move, and it 
might have been fatal—in her cooler moments it 
would have been—but just now she had been too 
much excited, was too suddenly chilled, douched, as 
it were. 

“I’m awfully sorry, I didn’t know—I—” he be¬ 
gan, then broke off as she began to cry, a streaming 
flood of silent tears. 

He took her in his arms at that, with no sort of 
awkwardness at the sight of her tears, and this 
stamped him for a woman’s man, even then. As 
to Henrietta, the red-haired Irish cook had held her 
to her own voluminous bosom one day when she fell 
down and cut her knee—that was why she could 
not bear to think of her being sent away, replaced 
by an English servant—but that was the first time, 
literally the first time, that anyone had attempted 
to comfort her in any such way. 

This was different, however, altogether different; 
as different—well, as different as this boy was dif¬ 
ferent to anyone she had ever seen, or so much as 


72 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


dreamt of: so kind, so wonderfully kind, no one 
had ever said such nice things to her before; and 
not only that, but so nice to look at, so splendidly 
handsome and brave—“gallant” was the word she 
wanted; with such a perfume, aroma about him and 
the clothes he wore. And how childlike that was: 
the delight in nice, clean-smelling people, the thrill 
over something that was surely cigarette smoke; 
for, like so many old-fashioned children, Henrietta 
Rorke was exceedingly young for her age. 

“Now, don’t forget, you darling, you’re my sweet¬ 
heart for ever and ever. And look here, Hal, it 
would kill me if you chucked me, do you hear that? 
I could not stand it—simply couldn’t stand it. I 
never loved anyone like this before. I knew that 
the very first time I saw you. Feel my heart, put 
your dear little hand against it—there, there, that 
will show you—if ever I catch any other fellow 
kissing you . . . Well, if I do, that's all! . . 

“They won’t, they won’t!” cried Henrietta, stiff in 
his arms from a very excess of feeling, shaken from 
head to foot. “I’d die before I’d let anyone else kiss 
me.” 

“To kill myself”—“to die”—there was youth, 
holding life slackingly and slightingly; just to get 
away out of it if you don’t like it, how easy it all 
appears in the teens! 

They clung together, while Shaen ran on, Henri¬ 
etta’s wet cheek pressed against his. Her heart, un¬ 
like his, felt as though it had stopped beating, keyed 
up ta such an intensity of emotion as it was. Her 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


73 


father loved her—of course he loved her—and yet 
there had never been anything like this. If love 
like her father’s—and oh, he did love her! express¬ 
ing nothing, displaying nothing, outwardly cool, al¬ 
most indifferent—was yet love, and there was no 
doubt about it, how doubly, trebly love was this, 
with all its protestations and plans; the passionate 
clinging and vows of this wonderful boy; the throw¬ 
ing of himself upon her mercy—hers, Henrietta’s— 
the quick, soft outpouring of words, to which after; 
that one fierce protest, “Pd, die first,” she herself 
added nothing. 

Up to this it had not been altogether easy for 
Shaen. Henrietta herself had not been easy, with 
a strange, unchildish dread of allowing herself to 
feel too much; a deep distrust of herself; a shrink¬ 
ing, half-wild instinct for keeping herself apart, 
preserving herself; a mistrust of putting her dreams 
to the test of reality; for since that first day, though 
she had thought of him constantly, woven all sorts 
of fairy-tale dreams about him, she had scarcely 
spoken to him. 

He had ridden over to Greylands the day after the 
poaching affair, and seeing him come up the drive 
she had gone sedately enough to the door to meet 
him, the small, grave hostess of so many recep¬ 
tions, with no thought of flight, until an overwhelm¬ 
ing sense of shyness, of her own deficiencies, swept 
her round and up three flights of stairs to the attic, 
before he had time to so much as set eyes upon her. 

She had heard the servants calling, and drawn 



74 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


herself in upon herself with an extraordinary sense 
of suffering and fear; as though she were hugging 
her outer self round some innermost core, her real 
self, all that mattered of herself—small and fright¬ 
fully sensitive, sensitive to rawness, and altogether 
unprotected save for this shell-like crust. Supposing 
that she went down to talk to him and found nothing 
to say; supposing he discovered her to be nothing 
more than a “little silly”—what would she feel like 
then? His own brothers and sisters spoke a differ¬ 
ent language, the outcome of a totally different life: 
and of course that was the proper sort of life and 
language, thought Henrietta. She herself was 
“dreadfully different,” people had always said that 
—“different” and “old-fashioned.” She had not 
minded then, but how awful it would be if the boy 
found her out! For the first time in her life she 
was overcome by that one passionate desire of every 
normal child, to be precisely like the rest of the herd. 

The servants had relinquished their search, with 
a desultory call here and there, rising to a series of 
shrieks under the pressure of half-crowns from 
Shaen—reckless as his father, and with no youth¬ 
ful awkwardness over the bestowal of tips—then 
falling away again. 

Craning far out of the attic window, peering 
through the pillars of the ridiculous fagade with 
which some Early Victorian Rorke had endeavoured 
to smarten up Greylands, Henrietta had seen the 
boy on his bay mare galloping away down the grass 
at the edge of the drive and felt that life was at an 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


75 

end; flagellating herself with self-reproaches. How 
could She have been such a “little silly”—such a 
dreadful little silly? Never again—never—never! 

But when he had come again next day—stung to 
that sort of persistence that was his father’s in any 
pursuit of petticoats—the same thing happened; yet 
again, a third time, when he walked over, cutting 

7 o 

up across Naboth’s vineyard, mounting the sunk 
fence, so unexpectedly that he was almost upon her, 
bolting in among the cold, shining laurel leaves of 
the shrubbery. She never forgot that. It had 
been raining, and the drops ran down the back of 
her neck; the touch of the leaves was cold as metal 
against her face. 

After that there had been a lull; then the O’Hara 
girls came upon her shopping in Castleford, stiff 
with shyness and insulted pride, for Mardi was with 
her, and the street boys called after them, followed 
them. 

They made her get out of the old basket carriage, 
a survival of the Miss Judy days, on to their own 
jaunting-car, and drove her back to Clonross, keep¬ 
ing her to tea, showing her the dogs and the ferrets. 
She was unbending over the horses, for she had 
learnt to ride almost before she had learnt to walk, 
when Shaen, who had been out for lunch and tea, 
joined them, and after this she was tongue-tied. 

He was annoyed with her, and he showed it; for 
what was the use of having a grievance if you did 
not air it, make everyone else feel it ? He had gone 
to call on her, bending from his height as though 


?6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


she, a mere kid, were grown-up,—and there were 
plenty of grown-up women re*ady with a welcome 
for him, he could tell her that—and she had run 
away, hidden. Such cheek! Ob, well, he’d show' 
her. He had been out to lunch with a pretty, gay 
woman who had treated him like a man, a woman 
old enough to relish his boyish essays at flirtation 
—the older they were the greater his charm for 
them, though he missed this. Anyhow, it wasn’t 
likely that he’d lie down to let a bit of a girl walk 
over him, he thought, for he realised his position, 
the value of his title, his own good looks; though 
only, to do him justice, when he felt himself, with a 
sort of amazement, put upon or passed by. 

He dropped his air of sullen pride later on, for 
Henrietta’s intense shyness gave her so complete an 
air of not caring that, quite unintentionally, she 
beat him at his own game. When it was arranged 
that she should come over next day and ride with 
them he proffered his own mare, almost eagerly, as 
though it were she who was doing him a favour. 

This sort of thing had gone on throughout Mr. 
Rorke’s absence, with Henrietta, scared saint, pal¬ 
pitating on her pinnacle. 

With her there had never been any schoolmistress 
or school friend to tap the fountain of her affection, 
run it off. There is no sense in saying that chil¬ 
dren do not love ardently, engrossedly, for they 
do. When a boy and girl declare, “I can never, 
never love anyone like this again,” they are right, 
for there is never again anything like this first love: 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


77 


so complete, so uncalculating, at once so sensuous 
and pure. We laugh at ourselves in later years re¬ 
counting our own experience, trying to belittle it, 
meanly and faithlessly enough, knowing all the while 
that never again have we touched such heights, such 
ecstasies. 

Henrietta had not realised what it meant, thought 
of it all as a dream, apart from real life. Her 
father had always filled her horizon, filled it still 
so far as she knew. When he arrived home that 
afternoon she had included Shaen in her general 
desire to be quit of her guests, alone with her father. 

Now as Shaen, at last, after many good-byes, 
took his departure, turning back and waving again 
and again, she suddenly remembered her duty. 
Poor parents, unhappy parents!—when they come 
to this; slipping back into a drab place among the 
other dull duties, remembered by an effort. 

Not that it was like this with Henrieta Rorke, 
save for a moment. The springs of her affection 
ran too deep for that, and after all, out of the 
whole world, two people are not too many to be 
loved at once; there are some who have hearts like 
hotels, always full, with a constant coming and go¬ 
ing. Philip Rorke was by no means put on the 
shelf; was not—never would be, could be—moved 
from his place. Wistfully looked to share it with 
another—ah yes, that was true enough, or if not 
to share, and this was impossible from the first, 
and Henrietta knew it—how well she knew it, how 
eager she was to smooth over any possible rub 


78 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

to leave the same level free for another, just one 
other. 

Even this was postponed, however, for young 
Lord Shaen went back to Eton the day after Mr. 
Rorke’s return. And though Henrietta by no 
means forgot—indeed, in thinking of him, shades 
of expression, words, glances, the whole effect of 
him, as it were, came out the more clearly, like a 
distant landscape to a long-sighted person—his very 
wonderfulness placed him a little apart in the world 
of dreams, while her father was still there: her 
daily companion, with those demands upon her to 
which every true woman, even the child-woman, is 
all too ready to respond. 

The household at Greylands began to run more 
smoothly after Mardi went back to India—wilted 
with the damp. When they choose, Irish servants 
can show themselves the best in the world, and the 
staff, under Henrietta’s supervision, took, as the 
red-haired cook said, “a round turn” upon itself, 
attributable, or so Rorke thought, to his threat of 
an importation of English; though it is more likely 
to have been the outcome of a wave of extravagant 
affection and loyalty to Henrietta herself; an almost 
childish delight in being ruled by a child—“the 
maistress,” as they called her. 

Meanwhile the difficult question of her educa¬ 
tion was more or less solved by Lady Fair suggest¬ 
ing that she should ride over to Clonross each day 
to share the O’Hara’s governess, already over¬ 
whelmed with five pupils of widely diverse ages; 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


79 


the sort of education which resembles nothing more 
than a handful of grain flung out to a yardful of 
fowls—peck or not peck, as you please. Perhaps, 
on the whole, however, it was the best thing pos¬ 
sible for Henrietta*, bringing her into close contact 
with youth as it did; the real source of any knowl¬ 
edge she gained, about this time, being due to her 
father’s lessons in mathematics; and later on, though 
not for some while yet, the Greek, Latin, and Eng¬ 
lish literature imparted by the oddly mingled efforts 
—the sort of showing off one against another—of 
the Protestant rector and Roman Catholic priest at 
the little village of Clogrhoe. 



CHAPTER VI 


Throughout the following Christmas holidays 
Henrietta scarcely saw Shaen. When they did 
meet, found themselves alone together, he was con¬ 
descending: “Well, and how’s my little sweet¬ 
heart?” sort of thing; as though he felt her always 
there, ready for him and his kisses. It was not 
until he got back to Eton that he was struck by 
the fact, in glorifying his affair to other boys, that 
there had been no kisses; that Henrietta, conscious 
of some change in his attitude, had held herself 
proudly, shyly apart. 

This realisation came to him the more oddly in 
that during his actual stay at Clonross, it had seemed 
as though all the indifference was on his own side : he 
had been sorry for “the little thing,” but he could 
not be bothered with girls, that was the fact. 

Suddenly, inexplicably, he had felt himself to be 
grown-up, leaping forward years in front of her; 
engrossed with his hunting; going 1 to dances that 
were in no sense of the word children’s dances— 
where no one would have thought of inviting the 
little Rorke girl—with other Etonians whom he had 
staying with him at Clonross. 

“Pretty kid, eh ?” she herself heard this: he 
might have been showing off the trifles on his 

mantel-shelf. “Pretty vase, eh?” 

80 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


81 


No wonder that she was utterly bewildered, re¬ 
membering all that he had said that afternoon in the 
stables at Greylands; then again, early next morning, 
when he had come to wish her good-bye, whistling 
under her window long before anyone was up; the 
hush of dawn with its gossamer mists, etherealising, 
sanctifying their passionate adieux, impressing even 
Shaen with a sort of solemnity. 

Going back over it, with that cruel memory for 
words, that sense of amazement which comes to 
people who themselves feel more than they can ex¬ 
press—for take it all in all, Shaen had too many 
“feelings” to feel anything very deeply—it was small 
wonder that Henrietta’s bewilderment increased 
rather than diminished. It seemed, indeed, as 
though she had dreamt something almost too good 
to be true. 

By Easter the kaleidoscope of Shaen’s feelings— 
a different arrangement of the same colours, few 
and crude—had again shifted. Eton had broken 
up early on account of an epidemic of measles, and, 
as it happened, none of his friends were at liberty 
to come over to Ireland and stay with him; hunting 
was over, and he did not care for fishing. There 
was nothing to do—actually “to do”—but there was 
Henrietta, and he realised her afresh, as it 
were; still condescending, and yet a little baulked 
by that air of hers, that standing apart, self- 
poised. 

The schoolroom holidays had not yet begun, and 
this irked him, for he had an idea that once he 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


came home, they all ought to be free to devote them¬ 
selves to him. 

Miss Griffin, the governess—meagre, insistent, 
and boring, with a long face and teeth like a horse 
—teeth from which the young O’Haras declared 
that they commuted her age at something well over 
fifty—held on to her pack, partly out of sheer ob¬ 
stinacy, and partly, poor woman, because she found 
the holidays already a great deal too long for her 
purse. As far as her pupils were concerned, how¬ 
ever, the sum of achievement was even less than 
usual, for Shaen was continually in and out of the 
schoolroom. 

Quite suddenly, in that puzzling way youth has, 
he had let go of his newly-acquired manhood, was 
ill-tempered, difficile, petulant, and altogether a child. 
“More of a spoilt child than all the rest of them 
put together,” as Lady Fair said, at her wits’ end 
between them. 

It was then that—unsubtle person as she was— 
she hit upon a subtlety, a truth which expressed 
Henrietta Rorke to a shade. 

“Really, that child is like the touch of a cool 
hand on one’s forehead, after the rest of you.” 

She was, indeed, worn out between her pride in 
the sporting attainments, the pluck and high spirits 
of her charges, and despair over the handling of 
them: first shooing them on, and then trying to 
draw them back. Her whole policy was blurred by 
the thought of how different it would have been if 
she, herself, had married Taghmony, and these had 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


83 


been her own children; far less in number—two, 
say, crystallised to perfection, a sort of compound. 
For, good soul as she was, running them over in 
her mind—Honora, Shaen, Denise, Edwina, Der¬ 
rick, Gerald, it was impossible to decide which she 
could best do without. She had, indeed, no taste 
for doing without; dreaming of life with Taghmony 
and yet reluctant to give up the sentimental memo¬ 
ries of her own husband, a far more comfortable 
partner. 

In the middle of the holidays there was news from 
India that Lady Taghmony had given birth to an¬ 
other son. You would not have thought that this 
could have affected any one of the haphazard house¬ 
hold at Clonross, but for some inexplicable reason 
Shaen chose to take it as a personal insult. “They’re 
old enough not to go on making asses of themselves” 
—that’s what he said, scowling and jealous. 

There were more rows, an endless succession of 
rows, and reconciliations—if it were possible to 
apply such a word to the calm forgetfulness with 
which people, fighting like cats and dogs at one mo¬ 
ment, would be addressing one another as “darlint” 
the next, walking about with their arms round each 
other’s necks. 

It does not call for much imagination to picture 
how bewildering this sort of thing seemed to little 
Henrietta Rorke, brought up to control herself; 
suffering agonies of shame over any lapse from the 
standard which her father maintained with no ap¬ 
parent effort; more and more bewildering as Shaen 


8 4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


went on from bad to worse; “working himself up,” 
as Lady Fair said, something in her own sporting- 
make-up, fearful of, and yet eager for, the climax. 

It was three days after the news of the arrival of 
the last O’Hara, during the morning hours in the 
schoolroom, that the storm burst. 

Again and again Miss Griffin had ordered Shaen 
out of the room, going on from a weak, “Don’t you 
think it would be nicer if you were to leave us to 
get on with our work, Lord Shaen?” to a petulant, 
“I will not have you here. I refuse to have you 
coming in here in this way, upsetting your brothers 
and sisters,” though in her heart of hearts she 
could never altogether disregard the fact that he 
was a lord, veered from cringing to the perverted 
snobbery of being as rude as possible to anyone with 
a title: “I don’t care if he is a lord—an earl; it 
doesn’t prevent me telling him what I think of 
him!” was what she told her friends. 

As often as not Shaen mocked or mimicked; on 
this particular morning he chose to behave as though 
she were not there; did not so much as glance at 
her: sitting on the window-sill, swinging his legs; 
teasing the others, who were really trying to work, 
as well as people so completely out of the habit of 
any such thing could do—thinking they were work¬ 
ing, but on the whole doing very little more than re¬ 
peat the same thing again and again, very fast, with 
their thoughts elsewhere—for they had been prom¬ 
ised a half-holiday if they got so much done, a 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 85 

proof that even “the Griffin” was beginning to feel 
worn down with it all. 

It was a glaring hot day and they were all on 
edge, the sun streaming in at the schoolroom win¬ 
dows, where the springs of the blinds were broken 
or the blinds themselves torn off the rollers: while 
a bluebottle buzzed maddeningly between the upper 
and lower half of one, pushed as wide open as it 
would go. Honora was conning over French verbs 
with a muttered sing-song, and Denise lying down 
with the pretence of a backache, learning poetry in 
her own fashion, half under her breath: 

“And then and there was hurrying to and fro, 

And then and there was hurrying to and fro, 

And then and there was hurrying to and fro—” 

the two of them nearly grown up, physically women; 
sharp as needles, full of charm and intelligence of 
a sort, yet ignorant as hens. The two small boys 
were doing their sums, squeaking their pencils with 
careful deliberation; and Edwina, the one with the 
most character of all the girls, reading aloud. She 
could not pronounce her ‘Vs,” and every word with 
an “r” in it, Shaen repeated after her, with a de¬ 
risive little laugh. 

It was an impossible pack to teach, in the variety 
of the ages involved, in every sort of way, even 
under the best conditions. On this particular morn¬ 
ing it was all beyond words. Miss Griffin’s voice 
grew shriller, her face flushed with nervous exhaus- 



86 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


tion, a sense of complete helplessness; for she could 
not turn Shaen, almost a man, bodily out of the 
room, and was too much on her dignity to box his 
ears—though that would have been the best thing to 
do, self-control being nothing accounted of with 
the young O’Haras; if you did not “make a row/’ 
your feelings passed unnoticed. 

Henrietta Rorke was trying to master her own 
French lesson, her fingers in her ears, and so missed 
a good deal of what was going on. Shaen realised 
this, and it exasperated him, in conjunction with her 
attitude, more than anything else could have done; 
so that from muttering he went on to shouting his 
mockeries, the tail of his eye on her small white fig¬ 
ure, her bent head; the soft mist of brown hair, with 
the two hands thrust in among it, completely hiding 
her face. Confounded cheek of the kid to go on 
mugging like that when she ought to be laughing at 
him, Shaen, showing off—and, truth to tell, a little 
ashamed of it, though unable to stop: starting off on 
a new tack, which had nothing whatever to do with 
Teddy’s rendering of Green’s English History. 

“Awound the wugged wocks 
The wagged wascals wan 
A wuwal wace— 

“Shut up, do—do shut up, Ronny—how can I 
go on, Miss Griffin, when that ass Ronny—” 

“Awound the wugged wocks, Wonny dear, 
Wonny,” repeated Shaen; upon which Teddy hurled 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


87 

a new dictionary with a sharp corner, hitting him on 
the side of his forehead, almost in his eye, drawing 
blood. 

“By Gad, I’ll teach you, young Teddy!” cried 
Shaen, and, making a plunge for his sister, foiled 
Derrick, who, with his slate on his knees, was tip¬ 
ping his chair as far back as possible, both feet on 
the top rail. 

They came to the floor together, but as Shaen 
fell he caught at Teddy’s hair, and she was forced 
to give to the pull or have it torn off her head. 

The rest of them were on their feet in a moment. 
Miss Griffin was screaming; Gerry squatting in his 
haunches like a little old man at a dog-fight, hissing 
and clapping, his hands between his knees; while 
Derrick, underneath the other two, gasped and 
grunted, drumming on the floor with both heels. 

Henrietta backed to the window. If it had been 
on the ground floor she would have jumped out of 
it: come to that, she was as near as possible doing 
so, regardless of the drop. She felt physically 
sick, wild, imprisoned, stifled, for she had caught 
a glimpse of Shaen’s face, crimson with rage, his 
eyes oddly glassy, his mouth working. To the end 
of her life she never really forgot him as he looked 
then. She .would try to forget, be very sure that 
she had forgotten, but for all this it was fixed on 
her mind: would come back to her, in their tender- 
est moments like a crude coloured shutter—the sort 
of thing one sees outside the lower-class restaurants 


88 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


in Italy, illustrative of the rudest passions, greed, 
savagery—pushed in between herself and the Shaen 
she loved, almost worshipped. 

And all for what—why—why? She had not 
mastered, as she did later, the complete futility of 
any such question. For it was always like this with 
the O’Haras; there was no following them, account¬ 
ing for them. 

She had seen them angry scores of times, fight¬ 
ing mad, throwing things at each other; and with 
good effect too, for in that family there was no one 
who despised you like the person you missed. All 
the same, there had never been anything to com¬ 
pare with that look upon Shaen’s face, showing him 
—as we all, at some time or another, are shown, the 
face of the person we love best, have imagined we 
know through and through—as a complete stranger; 
and more than a stranger: someone whom we could 
have never even visualised, with whom we could 
never, under any condition, mix. 

It was impossible for her to realise how little it 
had to do with what had occurred, a sort of outcrop 
or eruption of something as confounding to Shaen 
himself, despite the black dog on his back, as it 
was to everyone else, a tearing of the veil of civilisa¬ 
tion, a sudden outcrop from those depths—dark, 
passionate, primitive, and without reason—which lie 
beneath the outward lightness and good feeling of 
the Irish; rendering them liable to “go off the deep 
end” suddenly and with no sort of warning, for no 
immediate or discoverable reason. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


89 


Teddy and he were inexplicably tangled: Teddy 
kicking with a fine display of leg, her left arm across 
Shaen’s face. 

It seemed to Henrietta Rorke that they were 
tearing and growling like animals; Miss Griffin was 
still screaming, Derrick grunting. The sunshine 
beating into the room was thick with dust from an 
ancient Turkey carpet degraded from the dining¬ 
room ; the air was stifling like a blanket laid over her 
face; but for all that she shivered as though some¬ 
one were trickling icy water down her back. 

There was a sudden piercing, long-drawn shriek; 
the door opened and Lady Fair came in; while the 
combatants dropped apart, sated, as it were, and 
Derrick crawled out from under them, with a long- 
drawn whimpering complaint like a beaten dog. 

Teddy sat up straight, both legs stuck out in 
front of her, sobbing with rage or pain, or both, 
her hand to her arm. 

“He bit me! The beast—the beast, the great 
beast!” 

Shaen, rising to his feet, shrugging his shoulders 
back into his coat, turned sideways to dust it, 
straightening his tie. 

“Cut my head open—the vixen—bitch! By God, 
if—” 

“Ronny—oh, Ronny! Ronny, how can you?” 
wailed Lady Fair; while Miss Griffin broke in with 
a rasping whirr of words, more like an alarm clock 
than anything human. 

“It’s impossible to do anything with Lord Shaen 


90 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


in the room. I never saw such children—never— 
never! Lady Palmer’s little boys—everyone knows 
how successful I was with them—and Mrs. 
Cleevenden-Herries’ little girl—writing to me al¬ 
ways—such affectionate letters. Pve never been 
among such people before, and if Lord Shaen’s al¬ 
lowed to come into the schoolroom, Lady Fair, I 
must resign—I must resign—there’s nothing else 
for it. I can’t go on like this, it’s wearing me out. 
They’re difficult enough as it is, and so backward— 
I never met such backward children; and the way 
they behave—their language! I’Ve always heard 
that the Irish—” 

“Shut up, for God's sake shut up!” 

“Ronny! Ronny! To speak to a lady like 
that!” 

“A lady, pheugh!” 

“To behave like that to your sister—a big boy like 
you, almost a man!” 

“She chucked a book at me. Look there—it 
might have put my eye out”; he pointed to his fore¬ 
head, throwing back his hair, that one odd lock 
which had a way of falling over it, wiping the thin 
stream of blood from his eye. His tone was sulky, 
but he was bitterly ashamed of himself, overcome 
with shame, a sense of queer flatness, emptiness: 
angrily conscious of Henrietta Rorke, seen side¬ 
ways from the corner of his eye, a streak of white 
rigid by the window. “You row me, but what 
about them, eh? Hell cats, that's what they are, 
your precious girls!” 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


9i 


“Anyhow I’d rather be a cat than a dog—a mad 
dog!” cried Teddy, who had dragged up her sleeve 
and was ostentatiously sucking her arm. ‘Til have 
to go to Paris, that’s what I’ll have to do.” She 
made a grimace at her brother, all real sense of in¬ 
jury gone in a moment. 

“Serve you right, sucks for you—never been to 
Paris yet—little boy!” 

“Ronny!” 

“If Lord Shaen’s allowed to come into the school¬ 
room at lesson time . . .” Miss Griffin was still 
running on. 

“For heaven’s sake someone open that window 
and let that blue-bottle out!” cried Lady Fair. “Stop 
that noise, Derrick, stop it, I say! And Henrietta! 
—Heavens! look at that child! Henrietta, what is 
it? Ronny! Ronny!” 

But Shaen had swung round before the words 
were out of his aunt’s mouth, seeing her sway 
though he was not looking at her—would not allow 
himself to look at her. 

Henrietta Rorke fainting! “Fainting dead away, 
stiff as a poker, just because we were rowing!” 
The thing became a legend in the O’Hara family. 

At the time it was too real, too frightening to 
amuse them, though they tried to laugh it off after¬ 
wards—“Fainting like an Early Victorian heroine”; 
she was so stiff and deadly white, so like death— 
and indeed that was their first amazed and terror- 
stricken thought: death there among them all, 
touching one of themselves—death, actual death, 


92 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


and little Henrietta Rorke. The Griffin slammed 
it into them! shutting it into their awed conscious¬ 
ness like the slammed lid of a box, the snap of a 
lock: “You’ve killed her between, you!”—while 
Lady Fair, usually so irresolute, took the reins into 
her own hands clearing the room with a curt: 
“Nonsense! The child’s fainted, and no wonder 
with this heat. Out you go, all of you, and call 
Nanny.” 

“To faint—to faint because we scrapped—ragged 
—rowed!”' 

What puzzled them was the fact of her proven 
pluck; there was not a horse in the stables she would 
not have ridden, they knew that. Only the day be¬ 
fore they had been experimenting with an anti¬ 
quated fire-escape from an upper window, and Hal 
had gone down the shoot first, without a waver. 

“And then to faint!” No wonder that they were 
bewildered. Shaen himself was ashamed and peni¬ 
tent, in some queer way impressed. 

All the same, he took it for granted that the thing 
would blow over as everything did—more especially 
in face of the peace-offering with which he forti¬ 
fied himself for his next meeting with Henrietta; 
for he was accustomed to the O’Hara greed for 
anything in the way of a present, had an almost 
pathetic belief in its efficiency. He had at first tried 
to forget, and then really forgotten the way in which 
she had turned away from him when she awoke 
from her faint, the feeling she gave him of being 
irredeemably and forever far away from him. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


93 


Easter had fallen early that year; added to this, 
his holidays were pushed forward by the epidemic 
at Eton, so that he had already been at home for 
three weeks before the Indian mail, which synchro¬ 
nised with his birthday, brought the usual cheque 
from his father, who gave with a gesture even to his 
own son despising single figures. 

This had been the evening before the scrap—the 
day after the cable which announced the arrival of 
yet another brother. Deep in a trough of depres¬ 
sion, he had nearly torn it up, with the odd idea of 
spiting his people for making such asses of them¬ 
selves, unable, for once, to think of anything which 
he particularly needed for the expenditure of such 
a sum. 

This difficulty was now solved. He went off to 
Dublin next day, getting the train fare and a night’s 
expenses at a hotel out of his aunt on the pretence of 
seeing a dentist, and spent the whole twenty pounds 
on a little diamond and sapphire pendant in the 
shape of a heart for Henrietta, with a comfortable 
feeling of “That settles that.” 

He rode over to Greylands with this directly he 
got home, and finding that Henrietta was not in the 
house, tracked her down to the edge of the river, 
where he discovered her sitting among the rushes: 
not even fishing, just sitting there—the strange lit¬ 
tle thing!—still very white and wan, still somehow 
different, far away as it seemed. 

Without a doubt as to the reception of his gift, of 
its healing powers, he dropped to her side and put 



94 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


his arm round her waist. Even when she shrank 
away out of it he only laughed, flushed and self- 
confident. 

“Just you see what Eve brought my little sweet¬ 
heart back from Dublin,” he said, and, pulling the 
blue morocco case out of his pocket, opened it, flash¬ 
ing the trinket to and fro in the sunlight. “I say, it 
really is pretty decent, isn’t it? Look there now 
—look, Hal! I wonder if you’ve got a chain? I’ll 
have to get you one if you haven’t. Look, now, 
it just catches—’’ 

He broke off, suddenly aware of Henrietta’s 
silence. She was sitting very upright on the bank 
of the river, her legs straight out on the slope in 
front of her, her hands pressed down between her 
knees, while all about them was the scent of rushes 
and crushed river-mint. During the best years of 
his life Shaen remembered that, for colour and per¬ 
fume came back to him more clearly than anything 
else, less blurred than human expressions or memo¬ 
ries, where people slid in and out of each other’s 
places so quickly : more poignant by far than words; 
flowing in a perpetual bright, trickling stream 
throughout every emotion among his own set. 

“I say, Hal, it’s for you, you know; aren’t you 
going to look at it? I bought it on purpose.” 

At that moment she would have given anything 
to turn her head and look, not at it but at him, to 
behave as though everything were the same. But 
she daren’t—she was stiff with apprehension. His 
voice sounded like the old Ronny, but how could 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


95 


she know—how could she? “It will kill me if I 
see him looking like that —like he looked then,” she 
thought in her desperate child’s way. 

“I say, Hal—Hal darling”; he was humble and 
deeply in love with her, as always when she was 
angry or apparently disregarding. “I say, you’re 
not in a paddy with me still! Look here, I went 
to Dublin on purpose to buy you something to make 
up for . . . Oh, hang it all, Hal! After all, it was 
Teddy, and not you—but anyhow, I’m most awfully 
sorry we scared you. We’re savages, that’s what 
we are; it’s no good thinking anything else, that 
old ass Griffin’s right. Look here, Hal—Hal, you 
must look at it, now I’ve bought it for you. I 
spent all my birthday money on it—I thought you’d 
like it. It mayn’t be up to much, of course, but I 
thought—oh, hang it all—I thought you’d like it.” 

He longed to put out his hand and turn her face 
towards his. But he, too, was scared, unsure of 
himself; all his gay confidence gone. 

“Anyhow—you might at least look at it.” 

Something in the misery, the sense of failure in 
his tone, drew her, and she turned her head, look¬ 
ing, not at the trinket in his hand, but at him. 

“Oh, Ronny, why—why—” It was impossible 
for her to put anything of what she meant into 
words. Why were things as they were? Why, oh, 
why was he so different to what she thought him? 
Her eyes were swimming in tears, and for a mo¬ 
ment or two she could see nothing beyond that last 
vision of him, like a mirage in a lake. Then her 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


96 

gaze cleared, and she saw that it was the old Ronny, 
flushed, eager, penitent, his eyebrows oddly raised, 
his brows wrinkled. 

“Oh, Ronny, Ronny, why did you? Why—oh, 
why?” 

“I thought you’d like it.” He had no thought 
apart from his peace-offering; to his mind, with the 
values to which he was accustomed, it seemed im¬ 
possible that anyone should be regardless of such 
a thing. As though his thoughts drew her’s, she 
looked down at it. 

“What is it—why—” 

“Oh, well, I got in such a paddy—scared you, 
and all. I bought it as a—oh, look here—you 
know—a sort of make-up. I say, see here, Hal”— 
he turned it, flashing—“It’s not so bad, and all for 
you.” 

Now that she was looking at him something of 
his old self-confidence crept back into his voice, and 
after all it was a jolly fine present. There had 
been other things, cheaper, which looked almost as 
good, he might have kept back at least a third of 
his birthday money. 

“I can’t—” 

“What! Can’t what?” 

“I can’t—I don’t want it, Ronny. I—I don’t 
want anything from you, ever. I never want to 
see you again.” 

Something in her almost overwhelming longing 
to let herself go, to weep upon his shoulder, the 
realisation that much of her horror of him had 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


97 


passed, whipped her into a sudden spurt of temper. 

“You ought to give it to Teddy. It’s Teddy 
you—you—ugh!” She could not bring herself to 
say it. 

“Teddy! Teddy! My own sister!” He was 
honestly amazed. “I’ll be hanged if I will! Why, 
she chucked a book at my head—she began it! 
She! . . . Give it to Teddy—that young ass 
Teddy! A thing like that!” 

They had both risen, were standing facing each 
other, trembling from head to foot. For that mo¬ 
ment all Shaen’s contrition, his tenderness, had 
gone; his face was crimson with passion. 

“Look here, are you going to take it or aren’t 
you? It cost twenty pounds, I tell you—twenty 
pounds! Now are you going to take it?” 

“No.” 

“What!” 

“No.” 

“Say that again and I’ll chuck it into the river, 
I swear I will! Now, are you going to have it, 
young Hal—are you or aren’t you?” 

“No, it’s Teddy’s!” Henrietta’s head was turned 
obstinately away; she made herself obstinate; there 
seemed nothing else for it, the only sort of shield 
she had. 

“Hang Teddy! Will you or won’t you? Now, 
now. Look here, by God, I mean what I say l 
Will you have it—will you?” 

“No!” 

“Then I’ll show you—by Gad I’ll show you! 



98 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Look here now, look here I tell you—I’m going to 
chuck it—I’m going to!” 

One hand was on Henrietta’s arm; he raised the 
other with the trinket in it, and swung it round and 
round. 

“There, that’ll show you!” 

It was out of his grasp almost before he knew 
what he was doing, circling once with its gay flash, 
darting to meet its own reflection, while Henrietta 
Rorke tore herself from him, turned aside, and 
flung herself face downward on the bank, shaken 
with sobs. 

Shaen was on his knees at her side in a moment. 
“Hal! Hal! 'Don’t cry, Hal darling! I was an 
ass—a silly ass! Look here, I really thought you 
meant it, didn’t care for it. I’d spent all my birth¬ 
day money on it, and it made me mad. Hal, Hal 
dear, my little sweetheart!” 

He was trying to pull her hair aside from her 
face, drawing it back from her neck, pressing his 
hand in between her wet cheek and the fragrant 
mint, the dark rushes damp with tears. 

“Hal, I’ll get you another—don’t cry. For God’s 
sake don’t cry like that! I’ll raise the wind some¬ 
how—go to Dublin to-morrow. There’s another 
almost like it—I couldn’t make up my mind at first; 
I’ll get that.” 

He had raised her somehow, exhausted by emo¬ 
tion, was sitting on the ground, holding her against 
him. 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


99 


“Of course IT1 get you another—there are lots 
of others. Only the worst of it—such a beast of 
a price!” 

“It isn’t that—oh, Ronny, don’t you see it isn’t 
that—the locket thing?” She clung to him desper¬ 
ately now, all barriers down, with a feeling as 
though her heart were being torn out of her body 
in that agonising and hopeless struggle of youth to 
make itself understood: the last hope for most of 
us, burying youth amid its ruins. 

The explanation in reply to his puzzled—“But 
look here, old girl, I can’t make head or tail of 
what you’re driving at,” was lame enough; they 
were deadlocked against the sort of thing we learn 
to slide past in later life—that eternal difference 
in character. The “why?” “why?” as insistent in 
his mind as in hers. 

She did not really care about the pendant, was 
not humbugging there; he realised this with an 
added respect, profoundly puzzled as he was. She 
did not even care very greatly for the way in which 
he had treated his sister, though his own face burned 
at the thought of it—behaving like a kid, giving 
himself away. 

What she did seem to care for, strangely enough, 
was the fact that he was not—well, not altogether 
unlike himself, but unlike what she had imagined 
him to be. Even while she clung to him, returned 
his kisses, he felt the futility of his perfectly honest 
protestation: 





* > t 


IOO 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“But I never pretended to be anything different 
to what I am—you know I didn’t!” 

They parted upon that, their love and bewilder¬ 
ment alike deepened, at once further apart and 
nearer together than they had ever been before. 



) 


• < r 


PART II 


CHAPTER VII 

The more intense emotions of youth come in waves: 
ebb and flow. If the current has a mind to keep 
to itself it is—and happily enough—crossed and re¬ 
crossed by others, more or less diverted by some 
general trend. Reading of child suicide, we instinc¬ 
tively picture a still pool overshadowed by dark 
rocks, stagnant, dim, and enclosed; a young life 
with no sort of mental change to match its physical 
growth; isolated by chance, or its own over¬ 
sensitive desires, obsessed by some one idea or an¬ 
other, overwhelmed by it. 

Henrietta Rorke was of the type which suffers, 
but without brooding. There was something clear 
in he;r vision: that delicate poise with which, save 
in the most desperate issues, her mind matched her 
body. Even her love for Shaen was wholesome, 
entirely natural, for the age at which our latest 
civilisation chooses to fix the rise of passion is 
altogether artificial. 

Meanwhile the constant companionship of the 
young O’Haras was good for her, though they 
never got much further with each other. If there 
was one of the family with whom she was inclined 
to make special friends—and, taken all in all, 

IOI 


102 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


friendships and great passions inhabit different 
houses—it was Derrick, the dreamer; though this 
was one of those things which came to more in the 
expectation than the fulfillment. 

In thinking of him she found herself perpetually 
wondering what he thought, filling his mind to 
match his face: the wonderful dark-lashed grey 
eyes, the full-lipped sensitive mouth, clear in her 
vision. 

Even when they were together, and he was still 
silent—for he alone of all the O’Haras possessed 
that art—he would seem such miles away that she 
pictured him the habitant of some fine fairy world 
such as that into which she made her own deliberate 
and delicious retreats. 

“If he’d only tell to me, I’d tell him,” she thought 
again and again; while again and again she would 
find herself driven back upon herself with much 
the same sort of answer. 

“I was just thinking what sort of a pudding 
Brigid would be giving us for dinner,” or ‘T was 
just thinking it was a week since we had hot scones 
for tea, and maybe—” etc., etc. 

During the next few years—as Derrick failed 
her more and more completely—while, often enough, 
Shaen spent no more than a week or two of his 
holidays at Clonross, and the rest of the O’Haras 
remained as a whole, no one especially apart—her 
need for companionship was met by her father, 
their mutual affection, still and deep, a trifle cold 
as depths are. Far behind, and yet of real impor- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


103 


tance in her life, came her two tutors—an odd tri¬ 
angle this, the two men, equally ungainly, middle- 
aged, black-coated, and little Henrietta Rorke, 
reminiscent in her delicacy of a wood-sorrel flower, 
the most delicate of all blooms. 

It would be untrue to describe Father O’Sullivan 
and the Reverend Arthur Fielden as friends, for, 
given the ear of a third party, they would abuse 
each other with no sort of restraint. The difficulty 
was to find any third party with any sort of under¬ 
standing. This it was, combined with their mutual 
and passionate love for literature, above all, the 
classics, which drove them back upon each other for 
company; so much so, that having parted from one 
another an hour earlier—or likely enough passed, 
cutting each other at twilight in the main street of 
Clogrhoe—one would come battering at the other’s 
door somewhere between ten and eleven, an hour 
when the bucolics launch out upon their first sleep 
and the brain of reader or thinker starts out to 
work—irritant and insistent as the sound of a 
mouse nibbling the wainscoting—driven forth by 
sheer mind hunger. 

“Devil a mite o’ sleep would I be gettin’ till I’d 
convinced you, mis-educated as you are! But 
maybe you’ve come to your right senses by now.” 
O’Sullivan would bellow, pounding on the rectory 
door. Or Fielden, in his turn, with his sharp, irri¬ 
tated rap of a voice, his short, dry cough, would re¬ 
open some argument upon the parsonage doorstep, 
pushing his way into the hallway, then the study; as 


io4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


fiercely in earnest, both of them, as though such 
questions as the quantity of a Greek name were a 
matter of life and death; while their respective 
housekeepers, filling the lamps afresh before they 
themselves went off to bed, groaned over the waste 
of good oil put to no better end than to talk by. 

To do them justice, they never disputed over re¬ 
ligion, never so much as touched upon it: likely 
enough forgot all about it, for they denied them¬ 
selves nothing in the way of argument. 

“Sure, it’s the good God that gave us human be¬ 
ings the power o’ spaeech for fear that we’d be 
getting too fond o’ one another, forgetting Him; 
an’ faith an’ indade there’s little enough of love or 
friendship as is not schattered by a wag o’ the 
tongue.” That was what Father O’Sullivan said, 
with no notion of keeping his own unruly member 
between his teeth, more particularly with a fool of 
an Englishman who had the temerity to set up for a 
classical scholar. 

A queer couple, queerer still in contrast with little 
Henrietta Rorke’s clear lines, grave eyes, and quiet, 
considered use of the right word, pointing like a 
white finger at their queerness, bellowings, splutter- 
ings. Big men both of them: Fielden bony and un¬ 
gainly, with no more meaning in his outline than 
any prehistoric monster, joints which cracked at 
every movement, an intellect which worked like a 
powerful but ill-oiled windmill; meagre and em¬ 
bittered by the loss of ideals incompatible with every 
fact of life: O’Sullivan rotund and rosy, with em- 


» 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


io5 


purpled cheeks like a turkey’s wattle; philosophical 
and genial, his conduct and religious beliefs com¬ 
fortably fitted to a working formula made out by 
others; accepted with a shrug, yet still accepted, 
leaving his mind free from every sort of speculation 
outside his calling. 

It was O’Sullivan who instructed Henrietta in 
Latin, while later on Fielden drew her from English 
literature to Greek. She was only a little girl—- 
yes, to the very end really and truly nothing more 
than tha-t—yet the emulation between the two clerics 
held some curious personal element. They were at 
their very best in their arguments when Henrietta 
was present, listening to them, her chin cupped in 
one hand, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her 
passionately intent gaze turning from one to an¬ 
other, while they “showed off”—there is no other 
word for it—just as much as Shaen did, in his own 
crude way, half boy, half any sort of animal. For 
that was how she affected men, so surely that she 
might have grown into one of those rare women 
whose power is without end had she but known it, 
or—the last thing she would have thought of—■ 
cared to use it. As it was, she was blinded by 
gratitude—gratitude of all things!—to the first man 
who stooped from among the Olympians, or so 
she thought, to love her: fated by her own humility, 
for any woman who shows herself humble with the 
man she loves stands foredoomed from the outset. 

Most clearly of all this power of impressing her¬ 
self was shown by her own father’s attitude to- 



106 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

wards her: his way of regarding her seriously, as 
a personality, actually wondering what she thought 
of him: never for one minute taking her for granted, 
as a complementary edition of himself—the coarser 
elements sponged down like a water-colour—in the 
way most men have with their own daughters. 

When Henrietta was fifteen, Clonross was shut 
up for a whole year, and though Mr. Rorke talked 
of a governess at Greylands, the thing went no 
further. For the atmosphere of Ireland was soak¬ 
ing into him, with no real warmth, little more than 
a scornful hopelessness regarding the people whom 
he grew to resemble, while Henrietta’s entire edu¬ 
cation fell between the two parsons, her life as 
empty of women as it had been in India. 

Once again she grew accustomed to doing with¬ 
out young people. It seemed that the lighter sides 
of life came and went, like the flash of a swallow’s 
wing, leaving her untouched, ripe—for what? Oh, 
well, other things—passion and pity, the whole 
fabric of Greek tragedy, more than half lost in this 
senile second childhood of a world which wants 
everything made pleasant for it. 

As to Shaen, she told herself that she had for¬ 
gotten, and there \s no surer way of remembering. 
But her pride was hurt; he was so seldom at Clon¬ 
ross, and when he was she saw so little of him; 
flashing by, riding or driving with his sisters’ 
grown-up friends. They were like butterflies, she 
herself a moth; she felt that, though she thought too 
little of herself to put it into words. Even when 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


107 


the O’Hara girls came over to Greylands with their 
stories of balls and picnics, innumerable flirtations 
which sounded so risky and were yet so safe—for 
their gaiety and shallowness, the perpetual play o,f 
emotion, the outlet of continuous chatter floated 
them free of passion, like leaves dancing on the 
edge of a whirlpool, too light to be indrawn—she 
was still apart, the listener, the onlooker. 

There were, it is true, intervals, days and weeks, 
when this forgetting became a reality. She was 
keenly interested in her work, with the two clerics; 
beautiful words, above all, beautiful sentences, af¬ 
fected her like music; the pursuit of knowledge held 
the delight of the chase. It is possible that she 
might have developed no further than the student, 
apart as a cold current in a warm sea—for there 
was no demand made upon anything more than her 
intellectual sympathies—had it not been for the re¬ 
current memory of Shaen, like a breath of southerly 
wind, a perfume from some flowery isle, something 
apart from every day life; bewilderingly not belong¬ 
ing to her, and yet changing her. 

Her pulses beat less smoothly when she heard 
Shaen’s name; the news that he was anywhere near, 
anywhere in Ireland, blew a sort of fire into her 
veins, so that she was unable to keep still, to settle 
to anything, to sleep at night; lying awake on her 
side with one hand under her cheek; not so much 
thinking as listening, staring out of the window into 
the darkness, the mist or the moonlight; not look¬ 
ing for anything, with no definite thought or ex- 




io8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


pectation, but—strangely enough—just listening, 
listening and waiting. They were wonderful nights 
these; sometimes there was the heavy scent of mag¬ 
nolia, the rustling of birds throughout the short 
hours of darkness, never quite asleep: or again the 
wild wind from the Atlantic, miles away, the tree- 
tops rocking like ships, the actual twang of salt in 
the air, white upon the polished top of her dressing- 
table. 

One night when Shaen was in Dublin, no nearer 
than that—and she had no thought of linking the 
two—her restlessness oveVcame her so that she got 
up, slipped on her riding things, leaving her hair 
in two plaits as it was, and going out to the stable, 
saddled her horse—a grey half-bred Arab, her 
father’s present—and rode aw-ay towards the lakes. 

It was midsummer; the clumps of trees gave out 
a hot breath as she passed them; with each puff of 
wind they were like sleep-laden people, slow-turning, 
heavy and warm. They and the soft-breathing cows 
which rested beneath them were all alike one with 
humanity, a little gross: but the breath of the 
ground, the thick grass, meadowsweet and sorrel 
and wild parsley, was chill and pure and apart: the 
dew so heavy that it lay thick upon her hair, blurred 
her eyelashes. 

The moon, pale yellow and almost at its full, 
hung clear above Clogrhoe, its reflection in the 
river cut to a half lemon of light by the arch of the 
sweeping low-spanned bridge. 

There were still a few small lights burning in the 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


109 


cabins along the village street. The more humble 
and poverty-stricken the place was the more sure 
the light: for ignorance fears the darkness, and in 
the smallest houses there are the most children, and 
people like children. 

The sound of Grizel’s hoofs was muffled in the 
thick, dampish dust; but for all that the people 
snuggled lower, clasping each other, for there was 
little enough of that chill and splendid isolation of 
sleeping alone at Clogrhoe at this time; while not 
for worlds—not for all the curiosity of Ireland, 
the love of playing with fire—would they have 
drawn aside the blinds, looked out. 

Mr. Fielden, catching the sound of hoofs, half 
raised himself as though to rise from his bed, then 
lay down again: the rider had already passed, and 
whoever it was, he or she would be pretty sure to 
come back the same way, making for the bridge. 

He caught the sound more quickly next time, and, 
slipping on an overcoat went to the front door, al¬ 
most flush with the road, a foot-wide strip of pinks 
and thrift up against the whitewashed walls at 
either side of it, the only garden. 

Henrietta drew rein and he put both hands up to 
Grizel’s mane. He himself was tired and languid, 
drenched with a strange sense of sweetness, as 
though drugged by the night air. 

For a full two or three minutes they neither of 
them said anything. Then Fielden spoke: 

“You mustn’t let yourself do this sort of thing, 
you know.” 


no 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“What—riding at night?” 

“That—oh, that’s nothing”—he gave a clumsy 
flap of his large hand, a dry bark of a cough—“to 
ride—but to be driven out—” He hesitated, plait¬ 
ing and twisting at Grizel’s mane, one shoulder 
raised, his head bent. When he spoke again his 
voice was so muffled that she could scarcely catch 
what he said, those gruff, snapped-out sentences 
which he used when he felt anything apart 
from intellectual anger: “To let oneself be driven 
out—bad, that; can’t have that, you know. . . . 
Only two things get anyone out of bed at night, 
this way—despair or the restlessness of hope; bad, 
both of them. Go home to bed and sleep, child; 
sleep, sleep, sleep; never let yourself get out of the 
habit of sleep. . . . And see here,” he raised his 
face, a face like a coffin, nose all end and no bridge, 
wide, twisted mouth: “If it must be—that sort of 
thing, you know—choose despair rather than hope. 
But don’t let yourself feel, Henrietta—don’t let 
yourself feel—above all on a summer’s night. No 
one’s worth it, no one on God’s earth.” 

“I’m all right, I’m quite happy, there’s noth¬ 
ing—” Her words dragged: she was overcome 
with a sudden sense of futility, loss. 

“You think you’re all right. But you’ll never be 
happy, Henrietta Rorke—never. Only fools are 
happy, and you’re not that. Ecstasy and despair— 
there you have it, your fate, you with your eyes. 
If there was any way in which I could make you 
happy—but I can’t do that, no one can, and some 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


hi 


brutal, blundering boy—ach! Never dare to think 
you're happy, remember that, too. My God, Henri¬ 
etta, how young you are! And yet in twenty-five 
years you'll be as old as I am—ten years and all of 
life worth living over. ‘Fools and children are 
mankind to weep the dead and not the flower of 
youth perishing.’ You know that, eh? Go home 
to bed, child, go home to bed.” His voice changed, 
he smacked Grizel on the neck. “Get on with you 
now; what good will you do at your lessons to¬ 
morrow, to yourself or anyone else either? Tell 
me that.” 

He watched her go, and then, instead of turning 
back into the house, walked up the village street to 
the bridge, his coat-tails flapping round his lean 
legs in their shrunken pyjamas of drabbish flannel. 

At the bridge, he folded both arms along the 
parapet and leant his heart hard upon them, as 
though he were pressing something back, staring 
down into the water. 




CHAPTER VIII 

In the April of Henrietta’s sixteenth birthday Lord 
and Lady Taghmony came home from India “for 
good,” as the silly saying goes. 

At once popular and despised, they had lived in 
the world they had made for themselves, with the 
real India lying like a dark lake beneath and around 
them; its horizon untouched, its depths unplumbed, 
its even more dangerous shallows uncharted. 

Throughout their entire stay there, they had car¬ 
ried with them—as they would to the world’s end, 
desert or pole—that curiously English blend of 
Bond Street, Paris, the hunting-field and country- 
house. Up to the very end Lady Taghmony re¬ 
mained safely, obstinately untouched—save when 
such ugly facts as gross infidelities pricked through 
the protecting atmosphere of cobweb and sunshine 
represented by her own set; as for his Excellency, 
even when he was impelled by his desires to roam 
outside of his, he did so in a way so usual as to 
have become almost orthodox; so much so that his 
adventures might—at least in England—have passed 
unnoticed by the exercise of a modicum of dis¬ 
cretion. 

He was, however and alas! never discreet; there 

was a childish something, nearer bravado than 

112 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ii3 

candour, in his -amorous adventures; while he made 
the fatal mistake o-f believing that because he was 
away from his native country he could do as he 
pleased. “Everyone does. By Gad, the things I’ve 
seen and heard since I came out here!” that was 
his argument, forgetting that every man of high 
position carries his own petty parish with him; 
while the higher he is, the farther away from home, 
the more marked he becomes. 

When censured, at first in a polite and roundabout 
way—for his excursions were so glaring that it 
became impossible for anyone in authority, even so 
far off as Whitehall, to pretend to ignorance—he 
was honestly aggrieved: 

“What the devil does my private life matter to 
them, so long as you don't m-ind, Di? If women 
will make asses of themselves—throw themselves at 
my head—” 

“Was there ever any man that didn’t say that?” 
Lady Taghmony laughed, dressing for dinner, ris¬ 
ing up out of the sheath of white and silver which 
her maid had just slipped over her head. Her 
laugh was as pretty as ever, but it was harder. It 
showed how much she had changed when she added: 
“I’ll call you back when I want you,” to the discreet 
Holmes. Three years ago she did not in the least 
mind what she said in front of anyone; but then she 
really had believed, tricked herself into believing, that 
her husband just, as he put it, “played about”—all 
men “played about,” it was no use imagining things. 
She had shaken silken scarves between herself and 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


114 

the ugly world of fact, those sort of gross facts re¬ 
vealed by the reports of the divorce court, like a 
toreador playing with a bull, like a child who knows 
that there is such a thing as death but cannot connect 
it with itself or anyone belonging to it. But now, 
little by little, things were being pressed home. She 
grew thinner, and there was something just a little, 
ever so little, strained and tucked in about her, as 
though she were actually drawing herself together 
over something—in the same way as the ungainly 
Fielden—a sense of loss, an ache: a memory which 
felt as though it were in the heart, actually in the 
heart, cankering it, and nothing whatever to do 
with the brain. 

That last baby had died when it was just over a 
year old, and with this had gone the old, complete 
knack of forgetting. Perhaps in some way or other 
it had driven her to expect more from Taghmony. 
It seemed, indeed, during the few weeks of retire¬ 
ment, curtailed on account of her social duties, as 
though she drew far enough apart from her husband 
to see him clearly, and for the first time. Apart 
from this, when his first grief had passed, and it 
was genuine enough, he grew bored; it was ridicu¬ 
lous to mope; someone must make an effort or he 
and Di would go mouldy, mewed up together. He 
instructed his A.D.C.’s: “Look here, I count on 
you fellows to do all you can to cheer up her Excel¬ 
lency,” he said; and so, having done his duty, 
miserably uncomfortable in the shaded atmosphere 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ii 5 

of his home, he started off again on his questing, 
more openly than ever. 

A few month's more and an affair with a woman 
not altogether white was brought home in an ugly 
way to Lady Taghmony, so sharply that with a 
sense of dreadful clearness she realised that this 
“playing about” did, actually, mean everything. 
For one moment only it was like the smell from a 
drain—then she turned away from it. “It doesn’t 
do to get ideas into one’s head,” was what she said 
to herself, uneasily enough. 

“Oh well, all men are beasts”; and again: “Of 
course, he doesn’t really care for them”—these 
thoughts in themselves marked a descent. Still she 
waved her scarves, silk and tissue; was furious 
when it was suggested courteously, yet very firmly, 
that her husband would be better at home. They 
were beginning to pretend, even to each other. 
They had been used to recount their flirtations, 
laughingly, with as much honesty as people ever do 
show in telling of such things. They did not speak 
of them now; in so far as she was concerned they 
had ceased; for, “He might imagine that I was like 
that too,” this was the thought, smirching every¬ 
thing: an unfair thought, for Lord Taghmony, 
however he might flutter round other women, adored 
his wife, and, realising that he adored her, looked 
upon that as quite enough in itself. 

Still, as the atmosp*here around her changed he 
kept things more to himself and the adoration less- 


n6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ened. “Hang it all, one never knows what women 
are thinking of, what ideas they’ll get into their 
heads.” All of which meant “how much they 
knew.” 

Definitely recalled to England, having lived 
chastely for a month, perhaps more, he was out¬ 
raged: turned to his wife for comfort, as he al¬ 
ways had done, forgetting all that had gone before, 
helping her to forget. But not altogether, for she 
remembered enough to ask herself where was the 
use of worrying. 

They were met in Paris by their two eldest daugh¬ 
ters and spent a month there before going on to 
London. Both girls were beautiful, with the beauty 
of perfect health, milk-white skins, carnation cheeks, 
glowing long-lashed eyes; and Lady Taghmony— 
for even up to now there was no trace of petty 
jealousy in her nature—was almost pathetically 
eager for them to be happy. “Have a good time 
while you are young,” this was her reiterated ad¬ 
vice : over forty herself, and yet, for all that, 
haunted by the feeling that her youth was somehow 
or other being nipped in the bud: frightened by the 
sense of something lost in her old light-hearted 
faculty of enjoyment. 

It was the prettiest sight imaginable to see the 
three enter a ballroom, both girls a head taller than 
their exquisite little mother, all alike equally de¬ 
lighted when they were taken for sisters. “And 
really we almost might be,” Lady Taghmony would 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ii 7 

think, glancing at their reflection in those long mir¬ 
rors so popular with the French. 

That was at night. During the interminable 
hours of hard spring sunshine she shrank from any 
such test—and this in itself was frightening, giv¬ 
ing her the feeling of a lost child, fearful of looking 
behind it in the dark, most fearful of the very fact 
of fear—contented herself with admiring her daugh¬ 
ters; their young men and her young men keeping 
a little apart, ranged in two perfectly friendly camps. 
If eyes, or even more fancies, did stray—and she 
grew to look for this, hating herself for it—it was 
always one way, from the mother to the daughter; 
for she had none of that fine intellect which keeps 
men enwrapped, away from youth. 

She did not see a very great deal of her hus¬ 
band—though he had never before bought her so 
many presents—and there was something lacking 
in her world, almost but not quite filled when Shaen 
came over and joined them for a week: not quite, 
for after all he and his sisters and friends were all 
so young, so easily young, had jokes of their own 
which she could scarcely follow, though mother and 
son were the greatest friends imaginable. He called 
her “Di,” and that pleased her—quite dispropor¬ 
tionately—petted her, loved to take her about with 
him, show her off like a toy: wear her as a gay 
feather in his cap, so different to other mothers! 

He, too, however—and were all men getting to 
be like that?—had a trick of slipping away from 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


118 

her; and there were long intervals when she had no 
idea where he was and what he was doing. He 
himself, after any separation, however short, was 
overflowing with thirfgs to tell her; but, much as 
Shaen talked, he never told , accounted for himself 
or his time. His mother had been married for 
twenty years; but only now, when her son pointed 
the difference, did she understand the real gulf 
which lies between men and women: poles apart, 
however much they may pretend to the contrary. 
She had been so sufficient to herself, had such a 
good time, with not a moment for putting two and 
two together; but now, while her husband went his 
own way and her st>n started off upon his, a baulked 
expression, as though she were continually looking 
for something she could not find, came into her 
forget-me-not blue eyes. ' 

She had lived for admiration and amusement, and 
had nothing in common with the women of her own 
age; had always seemed so airily supreme like a 
queen of the fairies with her little court, that now, 
bereft of this, she set out upon a race with youth; 
not in emulation but only, pathetically enough, be¬ 
cause she loved the breath of movement, could not 
bear to be out of things, friendly as a child; rest¬ 
less and gayer than ever: her tinkling laugh a little 
louder, her speech more reckless. 

They came to Clonross the first week in July. 
Lord Taghmony had lingered in London because 
he felt that the India, or Colonial Office, must have 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


119 

something in its mind for him; but there seemed 
nothing, and he could not understand why. 

They brought a large party over with them; to¬ 
wards the end of the month Shaen, who was now at 
Sandhurst, joined them, with some of his friends. 
The house was packed; there were picnics and 
tennis-parties almost every day, dances or theatricals 
every night. The Irish servants revelled in it all, 
Clogrhoe was swept off its feet. There was no 
chance of anyone else getting anything done, no 
taste or time left for ordinary commonplace jobs. 
The second crop of hay, thick as the tresses of a 
woman’s hair, was left uncut, because the Tagh- 
monys had taken it into their heads to lay out a 
golf-course. There was nothing out of the ordi¬ 
nary in this; but why should Mr. Rorke’s most valu¬ 
able cow be left to die, unattended, at the birth of 
its first calf because there was a ball up at the 
big house that night—what on earth had the cow¬ 
man at Greylands to do with the ball at Clonross? 

Even the postman was consistently late; one day 
it was that he had turned back to Clogrhoe half-way 
through his rounds to post a letter for Honora: “A 
love-letter, I’ll go bail, by the glance in the bright 
eye o’ her.” That seemed to him, delighted with 
his own knowing, to be more than enough of an 
excuse; perhaps it was, but why should he be an 
hour behind time because Lord Shaen had a cocker 
spaniel pup “die on him.” 

Greylands itself was wrapped apart from those 



120 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“mad Irish,” while Mr. Rorke looked down upon 
them with a scornful melancholy, fully as Irish, had 
he but known it. Henrietta was not yet “out,” had 
no part in the gaieties; and just now the O’Hara 
girls were in too much of a whirl to have time to 
spare for confidences. They would pass Henri¬ 
etta in the village street going to her lessons and 
wave their hands, galloping by, or swarming over 
an outside car: “Hullo, Hal! Why don’t you 
come and see us, eh, Hal?” 

Shaen arrived, but she saw nothing of him, save 
in the same sort of way, passing in a cloud of dust 
and speed, driving his own little two-seater motor, 
a new acquisition this, with a lady at his side. 

One day after Teddy arrived home from school 
she and the two youngest boys found time for an 
afternoon’s fishing on the edge of Naboth’s vine¬ 
yard. “We waste all our holidays being sent on 
rotten messages,” this was the burden of their 
complaint. “Never a moment to ourselves to do 
anything. Honora and Denise spooning about, 
sending us all over the shop with notes—that Denise 
making an ass of herself over young Blake!” 

“Looks like an underdone ham,” put in Derrick, 
“all sort of pinkish.” 

“And Ronny!—Ronny’s the limit, makes me sick, 
no use to anyone; forever mucking about with that 
Arbuthnot woman—as old as the hills, fifty if she’s 
a day. Gerry found one of her curls fixed on to a 
hairpin in the bathroom the other day, pinned it on 
to the tail of Ronny’s evening coat—my word, there 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


121 


was a shindy, no mistake about it! Ronny! Don’t 
talk to me of Ronny!” 

No one had. Not a word out of Henrietta, not 
to save her life. 

So it was Mrs. Arbuthnot she had seen in the 
car, a vivid pink and white beauty of eight and 
twenty—a hard age that—with hard blue eyes and 
yellow hair. 

Lord Taghmony, having relinquished any more 
serious pursuings for the moment, frightened into a 
sort of propriety by his wife’s threat of a divorce— 
the pathos of this from Di, made for all the bright, 
light things of life, and really so easily satisfied— 
flirted with the young girls, who thought him a dear, 
while his nineteen-year-old son devoted himself to a 
married woman. 

“And very good for him, too: he won’t get any 
harm from me,” that’s what Mrs. Arbuthnot said, 
and meant it; careless of the fact that there is more 
than one sort of harm, which a mature, conscience¬ 
less, and technically virtuous woman can do to a 
young man—the slaughter of those innocent 
“ideals,” for instance. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot had a very precise formula as to 
what she would and what she would not allow; a 
precise line drawn, with infinitesimal difference be¬ 
tween herself and others whom she spoke of as 
“that sort of woman.” 

Young Lord Shaen could spend all his time and 
money upon her; kiss her hand and sometimes her 
cheek, if he went about it with sufficient diffidence. 


122 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


She had only laughed, indulgently enough, when, ly¬ 
ing at her feet under the trees which shaded the 
river-banks at Clonross, he had taken off her shoe, 
held her silk-clad feet between his hands and kissed 
them. After all, they were pretty feet, and he was 
a nice boy, a “someone”—“out of the top drawer,” 
she called it, little snob that she was. 

Then Arbuthnot appeared upon the scene, and 
she played Shaen for all she was worth, having a 
dispute over a dressmaker’s bill with her husband. 
She stayed on in the single room which had been 
given her on her arrival, though Lady Taghmony 
offered her another, and Arbuthnot was turned into 
the bachelors’ quarters; if he came to her door it 
was locked. There was nothing, absolutely noth¬ 
ing, that would hold water in the divorce court, but 
it did him good to be irritated like this, to wonder 
whether she were alone or not. 

Taken all in all, it was an amusing game, until 
Shaen lost his head, in a dark cedar-shaded corner 
of the terrace, during the interval in a dance one 
night. That in itself, with her husband sitting on 
a bench just below them, did not matter, was part 
of her plan; she had taken the boy there on purpose 
to pay her extravagant compliments, make Arbuth¬ 
not, fifteen years older than herself, jealous. But 
Shaen showed himself tiresomely too young for the 
game, ignorant of the rules—her rules—and went 
just too far: so far—with loud-voiced audacities 
and snatchings, taking everything for granted—that 
there was nothing for it but to sacrifice him, throw- 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


123 


ing him to the wolves in the shape of little Arbuth- 
not, uncommonly quick up the terrace and over the 
parapet, with an ugly biblical word for his wife and 
threats for Shaen, who defied him; declaring that 
they loved each other and didn’t mean to stand any 
interference, throwing down the gauntlet with: 

“An’ you can take any damned proceedings you 
like, so long as you take yourself out of this!” 
Very well done, too, and a credit to his sire! 

Shaen knew that it was well done, glowed with 
it; and yet it was then, there and then, that his 
charmer did the unforgivable thing—after all, what 
else could she do ?—how was it possible to be 
dragged through the divorce court for a boy of 
nineteen, whose people were as impecunious as most 
of their kind?—and laughed; laughed at him— 
Shaen!—and not at her husband, a terrible little ass 
of a city man. 

“Jimmy, Jimmy—my dear Jimmy! How per¬ 
fectly ridiculous of me! But for a moment—just a 
moment—he really did scare me! No wonder I 
screamed—feel how I’m trembling—how silly!— 
from head to foot!” 

She was clinging to her husband’s arm, laugh¬ 
ing a little hysterically, and how well she did it! 

“It’s really not his fault, poor boy—champagne 
and all that. My dear Jimmy, you can’t possibly 
pick a quarrel with a child. Spank him? . . . 
well, I suppose that’s what he does deserve—poor 
dear!” She laughed again—“cackled,” that was 
how Shaen thought of it then, savagely enough, 



124 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


that silvery laughter he had so greatly admired. 
“But our host’s son, and all that, so awkward!” 
she went on. 

“Ought to know better? Of course, but there’s 
his upbringing—these wild Irish! I’m sure he’ll be 
frightfully sorry when he’s had a good sleep, got 
over it. Ronny dear—don’t be ridiculous; Jimmy, 
he’s only a child.” She laid one hand upon Shaen’s 
sleeve. “Go off to bed now like a good boy, and 
we’ll say no more about it. We’re not angry with 
you, not really angry; but for your own sake, my 
dear”—she was very gentle, very motherly—“do re¬ 
member that grown-up men don’t treat ladies like 
that.” 

Later on she rubbed it into him: “Led you on? 
How can you be so silly! That’s what comes of 
being kind to a boy like you, allowing oneself to be 
bothered.” 

“Look here, do you mean to tell me you don’t 
love me, after all there’s been between us?” 

“There hasn’t been anything between us”; she 
looked him up and down, contemptuous and coarse 
and cruel as such women are. “How could there 
be! Why, you’re not even a man!” 

She might as well have struck him across the face 
—better, for he was more of the age for this, than 
for such an insult as she gave him. 

He thought of all sorts of things later: to have 
taken her by force, raped her, defaced her, then 
laughed at her; thrown in her teeth the unvarnished 
truth of the things he had done, the things he knew 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


125 


—he, Shaen the Blood, the admired of his kind— 
“Not even a man!” As it was the monstrous im¬ 
pertinence of her words left him spluttering, his 
face crimson, amazed out of all speech. 

“By God, I’d like to show her!” he thought, even 
then in a queer, muffled way, as though his veins, 
overcharged with blood, stifled any clear thought; 
while the very coolness of her, patting her hair as 
she spoke, turning her head sideways to a mirror; 
her whole appearance, so exquisitely neat and poised, 
her jewels, her fragile mauve and silver gown, her 
clear-clipped speech, her complete finish and grown- 
upness—and he was still young enough to feel this 
—armoured her, iced her over, so that he turned 
away without another word, shaking from head to 
foot. 

“Little beast!” he thought; then again, “All 
women are beasts!” 

He did not mean it, however, as was clearly 
shown by his next move: for he made his way 
straight to the stables, in his dress clothes as he was, 
and saddled his horse himself. When Tim, his 
special groom, offered to help, he cursed him, tug¬ 
ging savagely at the girth-straps. 

“Sure, you’ve got ’em too tight, yer honour me 
lord.” Tim was aghast; but as Shaen turned upon 
him: “What the hell do you mean? Do you think 
I don’t know how to saddle my own horse?” he 
dropped apart: stood silent at the stable door, 
scratching the side of his face as he watched his 
master gallop off across the park, white as a lake 


126 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


in mist and moonlight: distressed but not surprised, 
for were not all the real quality mad ? 

Shaen made straight for Greylands with no 
thought of having behaved badly to Henrietta—• 
taking the hurt from one woman for another woman 
to heal, as is the way with such men; regard¬ 
less of the hour—between two and three in the 
morning. 

He was still sufficiently master of himself to dis¬ 
mount before he left the soft grass of the park, tie 
his horse to a tree and make his way on foot into 
the courtyard; for that meant intrigue, and as old 
nursery pictures were framed in straw and ribands, 
so was the life of every one of the O’Haras framed 
in an odd mixture of simplicity and intrigue, a sec¬ 
ond nature. 

He remembered Henrietta’s window. The mag¬ 
nolia tree was past its first bloom, but a few brown¬ 
ish blossoms, of a sad and faded sweetness, hung 
among the shining leaves, and picking one he threw 
it in at the open window. 

It alighted on Henrietta’s bed. She was awake 
in a moment and put out her hand, thinking that it 
was a bird which had fluttered in, frightened, or 
with a broken wing; then, bending over it, she caught 
the scent—a perfume like death—and knew who 
had thrown it. And this is love, that quick, sure 
leaping of thought, fear, apprehension, or delight 
to one person and one alone. 

She slipped out of bed and went to the window; 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


127 

bent out of it with her hair hanging thick at either 
side of her face. 

“Hal!” 

“Ronny—what is it?” 

“Come down, I want to speak to you.” 

She hesitated, her chin on her hand. “I don’t 
think so—not now, Ronny.” 

“You might.” 

“Why—what is it?” 

“Oh, everything’s perfectly rotten. Besides, it’s 
ages and ages since I saw you.” 

She made no answer to that: a mistake: her mis¬ 
take, always, for some horses must be driven with 
a jerk of the reins, a snick of the whip, “keeping 
them up to the mark,” as people would say, and 
that's what Shaen needed. It would have been far 
better to have reminded him of the fact that he had 
made no attempt to see her, though he knew where 
she was almost any time of day, a saner time than 
this. 

She said nothing, however, because, with the 
moonlight on his handsome uplifted face, she 
thought that he looked sad—how puerile women 
are! Again, he needed her, and that in itself was 
a balm which made it impossible to be unkind to 
him; while, apart from all this, those who really 
suffer seldom administer reproach. 

“Come down for a minute—just one minute. I 
promise to let you go in one minute.” 

“To-morrow—any time to-morrow, Ronny.” 



128 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Look here, Hal, if you don’t come down now 
there’ll be no to-morrow, anyhow, so far as I’m 
concerned, I can tell you that. I can’t stand it any 
longer—’’ 

“What?” 

“Oh, everything—that rotten lot up there!” He 
jerked his head sideways, towards Clonross. “Hal 
darling—do come down and talk to me for five min¬ 
utes. I swear I’ll put an end to the whole damned 
thing in the river if you don’t. Look here, you 
don’t believe it, but I swear it—I’m full up!” 

At this a sudden picture crossed her mind—a pic¬ 
ture of the little pendant shimmering through the 
air and vanishing under water. Suppose . . . 
She dare not finish the thought. 

“All right, I’ll come.” 

She slipped on some shoes and a white woollen 
dressing-gown and went down to him. 

He caught at her arm as she opened the door 
and held it tight. “Hal—oh, Hal!” he said—for 
once he had no other words. Come to that, what 
was there that he could tell her of the insult which 
had burned through and through him? He still 
felt weakened by it; queerly chastened and wiped 
out, as though he wanted to lay his head against her 
breast and rest there, silent. 

When they had made their way to a bench under 
a medlar tree on the side lawn, he pulled her 
dressing-gown closer about her, drew her nearer to 
him. It did him good to feel himself the protector: 
this was what it meant to be a man, looking after 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


129 


a dear little thing like Henrietta. . . . This, and 
not those other feelings, inspired by “that woman” 
—giddy drunken feelings. Henrietta Rorke . . . 
“Like a cool hand on your forehead,” he remem¬ 
bered that. 

“Put your hand on my forehead—feel how hot it 
is! I’ve been dying to see you, to have you to my¬ 
self like this. One hasn’t a moment’s peace up 
there, with all those people everlastingly on the go, 
the women like a lot of screeching parrots—painted, 
dressed up, not caring a hang for anyone but them¬ 
selves—hard as nails. I don’t wonder at fellows 
getting fed up with it all, going into a monastery. 
A jolly good life too, a monk’s, with no one to 
worry you; by Jove, that’s what I’d do, if I wasn’t 
going to marry you.” 

It was out almost before he thought of it. All 
the same, he was delighted with the idea; so much 
so that he began to tease her a little condescend¬ 
ingly—and how healing it was to be able to conde¬ 
scend once more! 

“What would you say if I went into a monastery, 
eh, sweetheart?” He raised her chin and smiled 
into her grave eyes. “I wonder if you’d care—miss 
me,” he went on, and then, as she was still silent, 
was seized with a sudden panic—she could have 
mastered him then, by her silence, had she but 
known it. 

“Hal—Hal—look here—” He broke off, at a 
loss for words, struck dumb by the idea that a sec¬ 
ond woman—no, not a woman, a child, the child 


130 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


of whose adoration he had made so sure—could 
repulse him on this same night. “Look here, Hal, 
you do love me—you do?” 

She nodded at this, her gaze intent upon his face; 
still without speaking, for the more she felt the 
more difficult words seemed. 

“Well, then—oh, hang it all—” He was half 
laughing, still anxious. “If you chucked me now I 
couldn’t stand it, simply couldn’t stand it!” 

The sudden realisation of the possible truth of 
that careless, oft-repeated phrase caught at his 
heart, appalled him. We all have the trick of some 
such saying: “I couldn’t bear it,” “It would kill 
me”—but to find ourselves up against the stark 
truth, the reality of any such thing as the truly un¬ 
bearable, to realise its existence, is like pushing our 
way through a veil of sunshine—just teased by the 
dazzle, nothing more—and finding ourselves in the 
cold twilight of the gods, our feet upon the crum¬ 
bling banks of a dark lake of unimaginable depth. 

There was something of this Celtic twilight in 
Shaen himself: a substratum; not exactly depth, 
more like the strange shifting of a quicksand—eager 
emotions, panics, such as those which overcome a 
child. 

“If you turned me down I simply couldn’t bear 
it! Hal, Hal!” He was terrified by the possible 
truth of his own words: what happened if you could 
not, really could not, get what you wanted more 
than anything else in the world. 

“Hal, you’ll marry me, when we’re both properly 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


131 

grown up—you will—you will!” He turned side¬ 
ways, holding her a little away from him, search¬ 
ing her face: “You must, by God, you must! 
I'll make you—do you hear?—make you! I 
couldn’t do without you! Don’t you realise that ? 
1 couldn’t do without you! Hal, do you hear, 
Hal?” 

He actually shook her; there were tears in his 
eyes, running down his face. Then, as she was still 
silent, he repeated, again and again, amazed and 
desperate, totally at a loss to understand her silence: 

“You must—you must—oh, don’t you see—don’t 
you realise, I can’t do without you? Hal—Hal—” 

“I daren’t—I—Ronny, it frightens me. You— 
you—” Her words came with difficulty, almost in 
a whisper. 

“What—what is it, my darling? Tell me what it 
is. Look here, Hal, you will, you will?” 

“It’s—it’s—” 

“You don’t care.” 

“Yes, I do care. I do— It’s dreadful to care so 
—so frightfully. Oh, Ronny—” She was shaken 
from head to foot. “Oh, Ronny—Ronny!” 

It seemed as though some wall, some dam of feel¬ 
ing, so intense that it had shut back all expression, 
broke within her. The tears rolled down her 
cheeks. 

“It’s not that I don’t love you—I do love you, I 
do —1 do—I do—love you so that it hurts. Ronny, 
Ronny!” 

She had her arms round his neck, straining her- 




132 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


self to him, while he covered her face with kisses, 
buried his own face in her soft hair. 

“Those women—those women up at Clonross, all 
stinking of scents. . . . But you, you and your hair, 
Hal—Hal, my darling, like rosemary, your dear, 
dear hair—” ' 

“When we’re married—when—” He hesitated, 
holding her hair in his hands, crushing it against 
his cheek; overcome by a sudden glowing shyness. 

“When we’re married I’ll sleep like this, with my 
cheek on your hair—when we’re married—when 
we’re married—” Quite suddenly, as though the 
pent-up stream of words had been released, he was 
full of plans; there was no end to his airy structure 
piled up storey upon storey; while she with her arms 
around him, his head upon her shoulders, added no 
single word to the structure, holding herself breath¬ 
less and rigid, like a child watching the uncertain 
growth of a castle of cards. 

By the time they drew apart the air was chill, 
with that strange aloof chilliness of dawn, a new 
indifferent day purged from the heat of all that had 
gone before was upon them. The hot breath of 
the trees was soused with damp night air; there was 
a whisper of wind among the velvet-like mass of 
elms at the side of the lawn, a twitter of half- 
awakened birds, the sighing, broken note of a wood- 
dove ; a faint grey mist hung between the deep blue 
of the night and the rose and gold of the morning. 

As they rose from the bench they could see that 
the grass beneath their feet, white with dew, was 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


133 


strewn with small dark objects the size of a bean. 
Shaen stooped above them, stirring them idly with 
his foot. 

“What the deuce are they?” he asked. Then an¬ 
swered his own question. “Why, they’re bees— 
dead bees! What—” 

“It’s the medlar, look!” Henrietta pointed to 
the tree beneath which they had been sitting. “The 
flowers are full of honey and the bees are at them 
all day—the whole tree’s alive with them and their 
humming. They get drunk with it, drunk with too 
much sweetness, and fall down here—then, when 
night comes, the cold and damp kills them.” 

She spoke slowly, shivering a little, for she her¬ 
self was chilled and stiff, and the sight of the dead 
insects hurt her. 

“Oh, well, they’re only bees,” said Shaen; “noth¬ 
ing to look so sad about—a little less honey, that’s 
all; not much loss either—beastly sickly stuff!” 


CHAPTER IX 


Shaen was to have come over between tea and din¬ 
ner next day. That night, when Henrietta told 
him that she was at her lessons throughout the 
morning and afternoon, he had been impatient and 
scornful: “Oh, I say, I can’t wait till then! Cut 
them out. What's the good of them? No one 
was ever the happier for all that piffle—all the 
learning in the world.” When she declared that 
they must be gone through, he had threatened to 
come over before breakfast, and they had both 
laughed, realizing that it was already less than five 
hours to breakfast: clung together shaken with 
laughter; for there was something in the very 
thought of the hour which gave them a sense of 
wildness, a feeling as though they were fey, clear 
apart from the everyday world. 

“Between five and six to-morrow—oh, well, to¬ 
day—but it seems years and years off! What the 
devil can I find to do with myself up to between 
five and six?” 

All the same, he did not come at five or at six, and 
next day Gerry rode over with a note saying that 
they had started a tennis tournament early in the 
afternoon; the beastly thing went on till dinner¬ 
time, and he, Shaen, couldn’t get out of it. After 
dinner they had all gone out on the lakes; some ass 

134 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


135 


had fixed it up—he had nothing to do with it—an 
awful bore—an awful bore! He repeated the 
phrase twice, but if he had not said it at all the 
contents of the whole untidy, carelessly-folded note 
would have run truer; somehow, though she could 
not have said why, the excuses and apologies hurt 
her more than his a’ctual absence. 

It was three days before she saw him again. 
She was on her way home from her lessons, cross¬ 
ing the bridge at Clogrhoe. He was riding with a 
lady who went on without realizing that h*e had 
stopped. She drew rein just past the bridge, sitting 
loosely leant forward, her white-gloved hand on her 
horse’s neck, waiting for him. It was very hot 
and the dust was thick on the road, blowing over 
the bridge. Henrietta was wearing her school frock 
of brown holland with a brown leather belt, her 
hair in two tight plaits so as to keep it away from 
her neck. She was, as usual, exquisitely neat, but 
somehow colourless and ineffectual, or so it seemed 
to Shaen, careless of the reason: for it was those 
three days of constant watching, waiting for him 
which had wiped her out. 

“Hullo, Hal! I meant to have come over. I 
wanted to come, but all sorts of things have been 
happening; one’s time’s not one’s own you know. 
. . . Oh, hang it! Stand still, you brute, can’t 
you ?” His horse, a strong chestnut, splotched with 
dark patches of sweat, was curvetting all sideways, 
across the bridge. “Look here, Hal, I want to 
know when am I going to see you again? What— 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


136 

Hullo, we must get out of this.” He broke off as a 
yellow waggon laden with sacks came to the narrow 
bridge, lumbered towards them. 

They moved on together. Henrietta had a feel¬ 
ing of being very small and dusty, and somehow 
inferior. She had never seen Shaen looking so 
handsome. He was flushed with the heat, riding 
without a hat; his hair, damp with sweat, was 
pushed back from his forehead, his bright blue 
eyes sparkling. He had good hands—long-Angered, 
muscular hands—and they looked well upon the 
reins. Always inclined to arrogance, he sat his 
horse as though it were part of himself: adding its 
strength and speed, muscle, bone, proud impatience, 
distended nostrils, to his own structure; twice as 
arrogant, as though twice the man, on horseback as 
on foot. 

It seemed as though this horse of Shaen’s, half 
Shaen himself, was bent upon treading Henrietta 
Rorke into the dust, pushing her back against the 
end of the bridge so that its rider’s long brown boot 
brushed her cheek. 

“Oh, I say, Hal, I’m awfully sorry!” He spoke 
carelessly, touching his horse's side with his spur 
so that it reared, overhanging her, the muscles of 
its hindquarters swelling out in smooth sweeps like 
the sheath of young horse-chestnut leaves. Its 
chest was flecked with foam, which blew across 
Henrietta’s lips: she felt as though she were being 
overpowered by horse and rider, ridden down, made 
nothing of. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


137 


There was an elder bush overhanging the last 
buttress of the bridge, thick with dust and creamy 
blossoms, hung round with flies: the atmosphere 
about it was heavy with its pungent, bitter-sweet 
scent. Shaen’s dogs, a pointer and Irish terrier, 
had run up, hot and dusty, and were sniffing at her 
legs. She loved horses but she was frightened of 
dogs, and these two, with their bloodshot eyes and 
hanging tongues, overwhelmed her. 

Shaen’s companion had turned, moved towards 
them. Her bay mare lifted its feet high, held its 
head in the air; its nostrils red and dilated, some¬ 
thing scornful in its every movement: an air of 
never allowing itself to be really disturbed by any¬ 
thing. 

The rider was, however, all sweetness: “Ronny, 
Ronny!” she cried, and then to Henrietta, bending 
over her, “My dear, I must apologise, but really, be¬ 
tween my family and my family’s dogs and horses 
no one is safe for a moment.” 

“This brute—a mouth like iron!” Lord Shaen, 
between reining back his mount and shouting at his 
dogs, affected an introduction: “Mother, this is 
Hal, Hal Rorke—you know Mr. Rorke.” 

“Of course!” Lady Taghmony stretched down 
her hand in its loose white gauntlet: “My dear, 
I’ve met your father in India, though I expect he’s 
forgotten me. But why don’t you come over and 
see us r 

“I’d love to!” Henrietta glanced up at her shyly: 
Ronny’s mother!—this slim, girlish creature, with 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


138 

the eyes of an eager, friendly child; and yet with 
something sad in them, something—what was the 
word?—“baulked”—“bewildered.” The fair hair 
beneath the grey felt hat was very faintly silvered; 
for no reason in the world Henrietta thought of the 
bees beneath the medlar tree, whitened with dew, 
drunk to death with sweetness. 

“We’ve a dance next week, any age from six to 
sixty. You must come; I’ll send a card for you 
and your father. But of course we must see a great 
deal of you; all the young people come to Clonross, 
it’s what we’re made for, nous autres 

She laughed lightly. Always, as Henrietta dis¬ 
covered later on, there was some such reference to 
“us others,” “we old ones,” that same half-pathetic 
challenge to contradiction in those forget-me-not 
blue eyes. “Heaven knows there’s not too much 
youth and beauty in County Mayo these days.” 

“Are you forgetting yourself?” That, of 
course, was what Henrietta Rorke ought to have 
said; and might, with all truth, for to her mind 
Ronny’s mother was the loveliest, kindest creature 
she had ever set eyes upon. 

The atmosphere cleared around them as she 
spoke; her voice was like rain on the dust, tinkling 
among the dusty leaves. 

“I’d love to come”—the child’s face glowed, for 
she was like that, a child when she was happy— 
“but I don’t know—I’ve never been to a party in 
my life.” 

“Then it’s time you began,” smiled Lady Tagh- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


139 


mony, and touched Henrietta’s cheek with one fin¬ 
ger, then adding: “We must be great friends, you 
and I, my dear,” she turned her horse—all disdain, 
swinging round upon its hind legs, head still erect, 
scorning the bridle, pretending it was not there. 

Shaen, elated by his mothers’ plain approbation, 
stooped and laid his hand for one moment upon the 
nape of Henrietta’s neck: 

“My little sweetheart,” he whispered, and fol¬ 
lowed his mother. 

“My dear Ronny, what eyes! I never saw such 
eyes!” Lady Taghmony turned towards him as he 
ranged alongside her. “Why on earth didn’t you 
tell me about her?” 

“She’s only a kid!” 

“Idiot! My dear, that I should have borne such 
an idiot! She’s the youth of the world, the dew of 
the morning. If I were as young as that, with eyes 
like that—” She broke off with a half sigh, which 
hung waiting in the air; for even from her own 
son—as a thirst-bound traveller in the desert longs 
for water—she longed for the sound of that: 
“What nonsense, as if you'll ever be anything but 
young!” But Ronny was not thinking of her, apart 
from her estimate of Henrietta, for he had a great 
opinion of his mother’s judgment. 

“I’ve never seen her with her hair like that be¬ 
fore, it spoils her, but—oh, sometimes she looks 
all right; not bad eyes, eh?” 

“It doesn’t matter how her hair’s done; she’s that 
sort. It never will matter, with those eyes. You 


140 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


mark my word, Ronny, there’ll be no end to the 
broken hearts once that girl realizes her power.” 

This put everything in a new light, and Shaen 
rode over to Greylands next day, with the promised 
card for the dance. But Henrietta was not to be 
seen, though he waited, trying to entertain her 
father, conscious that he was doing so in a gallingly 
different way to that which he wished: for though 
his host had gained in tolerance during the last few 
years, it was the tolerance of a man who is both 
weary and contemptuous. Mr. Rorke had given up 
the idea of doing anything with Ireland himself, but 
for all that he regarded people like the Taghmonys 
as so many stones tied round the neck of the country. 

“Henrietta’s generally home soon after five,” he 
said, “but there’s no knowing; she and her two 
parsons get tangled up in all sorts of abstract dis¬ 
cussions.” 

Shaen hated to think of it: Henrietta!—what 
was that his mother had said?—“the youth of the 
world,” and those two frowsty old men! He gave 
up the idea of waiting, could wait no longer, raw 
with impatience, and rode to Clogrhoe in the hopes 
of meeting her. 

In the village street he chanced upon Mr. Fielden, 
and asked after her, as bluntly as though the rector 
were a servant, there to obey orders, answer ques¬ 
tions. 

“She was with me up to an hour ago, then she 
went home.” Fielden regarded him sourly, his 
ugly head thrust forward; no one on God’s earth 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


141 

had a right to be so well born—his own people were 
linen-drapers—so good-looking, well-dowered and 
arrogant as this young man on his chestnut horse, 
with no more grey matter in that handsome head of 
his than would go on the point of a pin. He, him¬ 
self, had worked his way through Cambridge by 
tutoring young men like this; knew them through 
and through, or thought he did, with no belief in 
anything beneath the outward dash, the careless 
insolence. 

Shaen was taken aback by his answer. If Henri¬ 
etta had gone home an hour ago she must have 
been at Greylands while he was still there; he hesi¬ 
tated, puzzled and pouting, wondering what move 
to make next. 

“You’ve missed her.” Mr. Fielden was pretty 
well as childish as he was, for all men are childish 
when they are in love. He had taken it for granted 
that his pupil would marry—not yet, of course, but 
some day; would have as soon thought of standing 
on his head in Clogrhoe street as aspiring to her 
himself—besides, marriage was a game for credu¬ 
lous fools, the attempt to weave an every-day suit 
of clothes from cobwebs, perpetuate what was, at 
its best, a fine frenzy. But the thought that this 
young cock-a-hoop should have Henrietta, with her 
fine intellect, her crystal-clear gaze, in addition to 
everything else, was beyond bearing. 

“Confound it! How the deuce did I miss her? 
Which way did she go?” 

“There’s only one way, as far as I know.” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


142 

Fielden’s tone was as rude as it could well be. 
Father O’Sullivan was kinder when Shaen called 
upon him—unable to believe that Henrietta, even if 
no one told her, could have remained unaware of his 
presence at Greylands—but for all that he could give 
him no real help. 

“Forever pursuing—the whole avocation of 
man!” The priest sighed and glowered as though 
over some luscious memory, then pulled himself to¬ 
gether. “For those who have not given themselves 
to the Mother Church, that’s to say,” he added; and 
something more about a laurel—some silly ass 
“pursuing a maid and clasping a laurel.” 

He blessed Ronny before he went, as he blessed 
all the O’Hara family, regarding them sub rosa as 
of his own flock, for one after another, their old 
Nanny had brought them to him for a surreptitious 
“shmite o' the holy wather,” despite their elaborate 
baptism into the Established Church, godfathers, 
godmothers, silver mugs and all—even Teddy with 
an heir to the throne for sponsor—her own particu¬ 
lar friends spitting in the infants’ faces, to make 
good luck doubly sure. 


CHAPTER X 


Shaen did not see Henrietta again before the dance. 
She went to Dublin with her father to buy a dress. 
A sort of fine cutting pride had come to her since 
that day when his horse pushed her back against 
the bridge—her head among the flies in the elder 
bush—covering her with dust and foam: for some¬ 
how or other it had seemed more Shaen than his 
horse. His mother was sweet and lovely, but just 
now, for no real reason at all, though she loved 
horses, Shaen revolted her because of his horse, his 
dogs, his arrogance of possession and strength. 

She would not allow herself to feel at a disadvan¬ 
tage again—dusty, nobody. There was the ques¬ 
tion of a dress for the dance. 

“Highish, I suppose—not altogether a grown-up 
sort of affair, eh?” 

Her father's suggestion was tentative; he 
thought that everything might be managed weil 
enough by the little dressmaker at Castle ford. 

“Fm sixteen and I've not grown for a year/’ said 
Henrietta. “Fm really grown up, and if you don't 
mind Fd like a grown-up dress.” 

He gave in—as he was always ready to do: “She 
knows her own business best, I suppose.” That, 
from her fourth year onward, had been his formula 

143 



144 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

for his daughter, the way in which he showed his 
affection. 

Sometimes he would have liked her to appeal to 
him. In Dickens’ books—and he had gone back 
to Dickens as the one author—daughters sat on their 
fathers’ knees, coaxed them with their arms round 
their necks. He would have liked Henrietta to do 
this, forgetful that he, himself, had left her no 
reason for appeal. As to Henrietta, there was 
nothing she would have liked better; but it never 
even entered her head. The independence which 
he had so proudly impressed upon her remained a 
well-remembered lesson; though never really part of 
a personality which was made to lave itself in love 
and tenderness as in a warm pool; a purely natural 
desire, so completely part of herself that nothing 
could really harden her, make her safe. The more 
she was starved for love, the more she kept every 
sort of feeling to herself, the hungrier she became; 
fainting with hunger during those days of warm¬ 
blooded youth with its enigma of restless longings. 

“A merciful Providence fashioned us hollow 

In order that we might our sentiments swallow.” 

Her father had taught her this in the days of red 
morocco slippers and white socks, and she never 
forgot it; though it did nothing to help her, only 
battened her down. 

At times when she appealed to him for sanction 
or advice, and he replied that she must please her¬ 
self, it seemed as though something caught at her 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


145 

heart, held it painfully tight so that she could not 
speak, turned away without a word, and: 

“She does not really care, does not really want my 
opinion,” he thought; then: “Oh well, every one 
of us has to learn to stand alone.” 

And stand alone she did, as a hop plant will stand 
alone, to such and such a height, swaying to the 
wind. All very well this leaving of the youngest 
generation to itself. But there is such a thing as 
putting too much upon youth, expecting too much 
of it; far better to tie it loosely to some stake, giv¬ 
ing it free play, letting it lollop, with the guides still 
there. 

She looked dreadfully grown up in her ball frock. 
It gave her father an odd shock to see her white 
neck and arms, anything more than a small square 
or V-shaped opening. For men are extraordinarily 
sensitive about their daughters, much more so than 
the mothers, who strip them for the saleyard—courts 
and ball-rooms. 

Not that there was anything immodest about 
Henrietta; but it was a grown-up dress, white tulle 
and crystal beads like dewdrops, and she was a 
grown woman with her hair in a knot at the back 
of her head. After dinner that night, for the first 
time in her life, her father got up and opened the 
door for her. This scared her. “Oh, don’t, 
father!” she said, glancing at him sideways, the 
tears in her eyes. If it was going to be like that, 
now . . . Oh, well, they were strangers, more 
strangers than ever, and there was an end to it. 


146 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


He scarcely seemed to glance at her. When she 
asked him, with an air of elaborate indifference, if 
she looked “all right,” he answered: 

“Oh yes, I suppose so; one loses the run of all 
these new fashions.” 

She had been in every sort of difficulty over her 
dressing: what did one do with the sleeves of one’s 
chemise? And surely the little flounce of tulle 
round the arms should be less transparent. She 
stretched a scrap of lace across the bosom of her 
frock, ashamed of the white sweep, the double swell 
towards her breasts. The Dublin dressmaker had 
assured her that it was all right, but she did not 
know, was terrified of any indecency. 

She had been taught to dance by a young person 
who visited Castle ford once a week throughout the 
winter months. When a gentleman asked her for 
a dance, she must reply: “With pleasure.” 

She repeated the phrase to herself again and 
again, until there was a sort of stutter in her mind 
and she realised that she could never say it, never, 
never. Besides, what was she to say if she did not 
want to dance? There was Billy Joyce, who got 
drunk at balls; how was she to escape dancing with 
people like that—“With pleasure”—“Without pleas¬ 
ure”? No, that was nonsense! “No thank you,” 
—how bald it sounded! There must be something 
else. 

Her petticoat, too full for her narrow skirt, a 
sheath of white satin veiled with tulle, stuck it out; 
she realised this while she smoothed herself down 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


i 47 

thoughtfully in front of the long mirror in Lady 
Taghmony’s wonderful bedroom. 

They were a little late, for nothing would hurry 
Philip Rorke in these days. When they entered 
the ball-room dancing was in full swing. Couples 
swept by them in a wash of warm perfume, the 
very sight of them made Henrietta giddy; she felt 
as though her brain swept to and fro with them, 
in a faint wash. It seemed impossible that she 
could ever recognise anyone: there were two sexes 
distinguished by their dress, nothing more; no real 
individual people. 

Her dress was not a bit too low after all, that 
was one comfort. The two pins holding that scrap 
of lace—what Cooky, called in to see her dressed, 
described as “a thaeste o’ modesty”—were whisked 
out unseen. 

The first thing was to say how-do-you-do to her 
hostess, she knew that; but Lady Taghmony was 
dancing. After a while, as her sight cleared, 
Henrietta saw her whirl past in the arms of a man 
as young as Ronny, with an upright crest of fair 
hair, holding her negligently as though to say: 
“You are a Somebody, but, all the same, out of it, 
the last generation.” She was dressed in palest 
peach-blossom satin, and laughed and talked as she 
danced; unable to let herself go, lose herself in that 
sort of ecstasy which enwrapped some of the 
younger dancers; her eyes ranged from side to side 
with that habitual air of seeking for something that 
was lost. 


148 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Despite the grown-up frock, Henrietta felt very 
small—a nobody. Her father was talking to an¬ 
other man. There were no chaperones to curtain 
the walls and doorways, and so disguise the fact 
that she was not dancing, remained unsought. She 
was overcome by an agony of shyness, conscious of 
the length of her bare arms. 

“Look—oh, do look!” said Shaen’s partner, who 
prided herself upon her generosity to her own sex. 
“Who is that girl standing by the door? Did you 
ever see anything so lovely?” 

Shaen whirled, twisted his partner round, and 
saw her. Henrietta! Henrietta, by all that was 
holy! His mother’s prophecy came back to him: 

“Mark my words for it, there'll be no end to the 
broken hearts once that girl realises her power,” 
and again, “those eyes.” 

Did she realize it—did she? . . . Oh, well, it 
did not matter anyhow, for she belonged to him. 
But did she—realize it, belong to him? His every 
thought was blurred; for here, in the place of “dear 
little Hal,” was the complete, the grown-up young 
lady, more terrible than any goddess. Already peo¬ 
ple were staring at her. She stood there alone with 
such an amazing air of poise: stiff with shyness, had 
they but known it. 

He had no idea she was so tall, and her height im¬ 
pressed him. There was a silver riband round her 
hair and across her wide forehead, her dim brown 
hair fluffed out beneath it; her small pointed chin 
was raised, her lips folded, her eyes glowed; he 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


149 

had never seen her with so much colour, and in a 
sudden access of resentment he thought, 

“She’s rouged herself.” 

But her flush was sheer funk; the only sign of it, 
for she gave nothing away; there was no hint of 
where or how to pierce her armour. Her shoul¬ 
ders were ra,ther sloping for a modern girl, her neck 
white and smooth; there was that sweep to the 
young firm breast which had frightened her. Quite 
suddenly Shaen felt himself prudish about this, half 
offended, as her father had been. Hang it all, she 
belonged to him! 

“She looks like Daphne”—the girl he was danc¬ 
ing with was a pretentious gusher, all the same, it 
was the name that Father O’Sullivan had used. 

Daphne, and that ass with the tree— Oh, they 
were dotty, the whole lot of them! 

“Suppose we go on?” 

“Awfully sorry, but must look after people—all 
that sort of thing, you know,” muttered Shaen; 
rudely, without even looking at his partner, shaking 
himself free of the hand on his arm, making a bee¬ 
line for Henrietta. 

“Why are you standing here alone? Everyone’s 
staring at you.” He spoke angrily. 

Henrietta Rorke turned aside and touched her 
father’s arm: “If we could find a seat—somewhere 
to sit down.” Shaen’s tone offended her: she did 
not want to look at him. 

“But you’re going to dance with me.” Shaen’s 
eyebrows were raised; he looked surprised, taken 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


150 

aback by her tone. “Of course you’re going to 
dance with me. I didn’t know you’d come, that’s 
all. Why didn’t someone tell me you’d come? 
And look here, we’ll find somewhere to sit till the 
next dance—we don’t want to stand here with every¬ 
one staring at us.” 

“Hullo, Shaen!” Mr. Rorke turned round with 
his tired, mocking smile. “You’ll look after Henri¬ 
etta, I suppose, find her some nice young men to 
dance with?” 

“Yes, sir, of course—and there’s bridge in the 
library. I expect you’ll find my father there,” he 
said; then added, with a sharp note of irritation, 
turning aside, “I’ll be hanged if I do!” 

“Do what?” 

He had drawn Henrietta’s hand within his arm. 
She was still pulling a little apart from him, but she 
could not struggle with him there in front of every¬ 
one. 

“Find nice young men for you to dance with— 
you’re going to dance with me.” 

“You’ll have to dance with other people—you're 
the host.” 

“The host! I like that! If there is any host 
or hostess, it’s my father and mother, both busy 
enjoying themselves. If they’d done their duty do 
you think you’d have been left standing there alone? 
Now—how will this do?” He had found a corner 
in Lady Taghmony’s boudoir, shaded by a screen 
and plants in pots—ferns and rose-tinted geranium 
—on a three-storied stand, two chairs side by side. 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


151 

“Anyhow, you’re going to dance with me—with no 
one but me, aren’t you, Hal?” He was coaxing 
and entreating, looking up into her face, caressing 
her bare forearm with one finger, settling the 
cushion behind her back with the other. “Always, 
always. . . . Look here, Hal, it ’ud drive me stark 
staring mad to see you dancing with anyone else. 
I wonder if you have the foggiest sort of idea what 
you look like. I tell you it knocked me silly when 
I saw you standing there.” 

“Why—what?” Once again she was scared, 
feeling most dreadfully undressed, wondering what 
was wrong with her. 

“The most beautiful thing I ever saw.” 

She glanced at him sideways; no, he was not 
laughing, but there was something in his eyes which 
—though of course it was different, altogether dif¬ 
ferent—reminded her of the far-off days when he 
had flown upon Teddy in the schoolroom. She 
turned away her head, the blood burning up over her 
neck and into her face. 

“I was beastly rude to you, but it’s nothing to 
what I felt. Not rude—of course I don’t mean 
that, but—look here, Hal, as if I couldn’t stand any¬ 
one else looking at you: as if I wanted to wrap you 
round in something, pick you up in my arms and 
carry you off, oh, anywhere—up into the mountains 
—out on to the lakes. I say, Hal, you won’t dance 
with anyone else—you won’t, will you, darling? 
That’s settled; I couldn’t stand it, simply couldn’t 
stand it.” 


152 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“You must stand it, Ronny, you must.” She 
spoke firmly enough. But for all that she was, as 
always, profoundly confused by his words, the rush, 
the ease of them. If a person said a thing like 
that, “I couldn’t bear it,” looked at one with such 
pain and despair, they must feel it, dreadfully, truly. 
If he did not seem to care once he was away 
from her, seemed to forget, it must be that she in 
some way expected too much. She did not know 
the way in which men did behave, that was all. It 
was clear that she must learn; go to school on it, as 
it were. “It’s not much, just to dance—” 

He broke in upon her at this: “Not much—how 
about me? You can’t know what it would be like, 
to see some silly ass with his arm round you, his 
beastly hot hands pawing you about. Oh, I know 

them. Their knees touch yours and they pretend 

/ 

it’s all a mistake; taking girls away into dark cor¬ 
ners, making love to them, trying to kiss them— 
pawing them.” 

It was disgusting that such things could be; for 
that moment he thought of them with loathing, 
purged of all such feelings himself. 

“Look here, Hal—my precious, how smooth your 
skin is; I never felt anything like it—it’s like satin; 
and all those little veins in the hollow of your arm 
—I say, Hal, I couldn’t stand it; you dancing with 
anyone else I mean. You simply don’t know what 
men are.” 

“I want to know—I must know, don’t you see— 
I must.” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


153 


“You —want—to—know—” He was amazed. 

“Yes.” She spoke steadily, hesitating as always 
when she felt herself obliged to make a sort of 
stand. It was difficult to put what she had to say 
into words; apart from that, the touch of Shaen’s 
fingers upon her arm moved her so that her heart 
pattered rather than beat, almost in her throat, 
breaking up her words with a sort of “tremble.” 

“I want—to get to know other men. I’m six¬ 
teen—I—” She hesitated, then went on, rather 
desperately: “I can’t let you fill up everything.” 

“Fill up everything—how?” 

It seemed as though she were torn between two 
instincts—no reason at all—the instinct to protect 
herself, make sure; and that other, stronger, in¬ 
stinct which bade her surrender herself to Shaen’s 
caresses, float upon them. 

“To think about you all the time—you’ve got so 
many other people in your life. I’ve got nobody, 
don’t you see, and I can’t judge.” 

“But how do you want to judge—what do you 
want to know, so long as we’ve got each other, so 
long as we love each other? Hal—Hal darling, 
what does anything matter but love; what else do 
you want?” 

She shook her head without speaking, looking 
away from him. 

“Hal, look at me—Hal, Hal!” He caught both 
her hands, held them tight, pressed together between 
his own, holding on to them, overcome by one of 
those sudden panics. “Does it mean that you don’t 




154 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


care—that you’re not certain of caring? ... It 
can’t, it can’t! Good God, Hal, you’re not going 
back on me now, I couldn’t stand it—I couldn’t, 
after all these years. Look here, Hal, there’s never 
been any other girl I cared for, really cared for. 
What do other men matter to you, what can they 
matter?—they’re not us.” 

‘‘You’ve danced with other girls, gone about . . . 
Oh, but it’s not that, only—don’t you see, I don’t 
know. I don’t know! I don’t know what men 
expect—have to give: that’s why I don’t want to 
care too much, care for nothing else—it frightens 
me.” 

“I can’t see how anything matters, so long as 
we have each other, are going to be married.” 

“It does matter—if—if we were married it would 
matter all the more. Because—oh, don’t you see, 
Ronny, I’d have nothing to weigh you against.” 
She spoke with a sudden certainty, an impulse of 
profound wisdom: ceasing to pull away from him; 
looking him straight in the face. “It would be as 
hard on you as it would be on me. I should care 
too much—expect too much. I daren’t—daren’t do 
that.” 

“You can’t expect too much. Anyhow, what can 
you want with other men?” He stuck to that. 

“Just to dance with them, talk to them—Ronny, 
don't you see? I know nobody but old men. 
You’re the only young man I ever knew.” 

“But you can dance with me.” He was deeply 
puzzled; he couldn’t make her out. What was it 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


I SS 


she wanted? He himself, at that moment, cared 
for nothing else, nothing else mattered. “Feel my 
heart!” He caught her hand and pressed it to his 
heart, beating so that it shook him, the blood pound¬ 
ing through his veins. As his eyes dropped from 
her face to her neck he shivered. If anyone else 
got her, all there was to her, he couldn’t stand it— 
couldn’t; it would kill him. 

“Anyhow, I can’t dance with you all the time.” 
She was right enough there, for it was before the 
day of such things as one partner for the entire eve¬ 
ning. For all that, she felt the weakness, the half 
bending forward, then, dragging back of her words. 
But what was there for her to do? It seemed as 
though something had got hold of her, was drawing 
her like a loosened leaf, sucked forward by a draught 
of air, drawing the life out of and into Shaen, so 
that she was wrung by a desire to make herself very 
small, folded to nothing in his arms. 

He was half upon one knee, upon the edge of the 
low chair at her side, one hand holding hers, the 
other arm round her waist, looking up in her face, 
entreating her, humble and adoring. No wonder 
that she laid her palm against his cheek, cupping 
the rather high bone, the clear flush of red and 
brown, all her weakness in the sighing, half- 
despairing utterance of his name: 

“Oh, Ronny—Ronny!” 

“If we told them we’re engaged, really engaged, 
it would be all right. Hal, if we love each other, 
that’s all right, we are engaged—we are. You can’t 


156 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

refuse me, because you said you loved me, you said 
it.” 

“I know—but—” She broke off with no words 
left: it felt as though her heart and brain were a 
fan, winnowing to and fro in the hot, scented air. 

“There is no Tut/ there can’t be. We’re en¬ 
gaged and we’re going to be married—we’ll tell 
everybody—that’s settled. You can’t dance with 
anyone else now. Hal, think of it, you and I— 
what a lark! In a year’s time you'll be an old mar¬ 
ried woman; we’ll have a house of our own and 
hunt like blazes. Hal—darling—darling—my 
wife.” 

He pulled her to him and kissed her, wild with 
excitement. “We’ll tell them all—that’ll make them 
sit up—engaged at your first ball, Hal, you darling, 
darling thing! One moment—that silver affair 
round your head’s got all rucked up—awful give¬ 
away that, but what does it matter?—they’ll all 
know.” He had drawn her to her feet, pulled her 
forward. 

As they went out of the room another couple en¬ 
tered it—Honora with one of the Joyces. Shaen 
caught at his arm as they passed, laughed across at 
his sister: 

“I say, you two, Billy, Honora, you’ve got to 
congratulate me—we’re engaged, we two, Hal and 
I. I say, Billy, you don't know Miss Rorke, do 
you?” The words tumbled out one on top of the 
other. “It’s no good asking her to dance, she’s 
never going to dance with anyone else again.” 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


157 


He was off before they could answer, dragging 
Henrietta with him. Honora’s laughter followed 
them: 

“Dippy!—mad as a hatter!” 

When Henrietta looked back over that evening, 
tried to focus it in her own mind, nothing seemed 
clear or real. She herself \Vas not real: she moved 
in a maze, walked upon air, and nobody else was real 
either. She and Shaen danced together throughout 
the entire evening. He announced his engagement 
to everyone, and everyone laughed at them. 
“You’re mad, Shaen, that’s what you are—madder 
than ever!” 

Lord Taghmony had laughed more uproariously 
than anyone. Not so his wife. Looking back on 
it, Henrietta saw her as the only one who had not 
laughed, not at first, spontaneously, while her small 
face had hardened; the baulked, defrauded look in 
the pretty blue eyes sharpened, as she glanced from 
one to the other. 

“What nonsense, Ronny! You’re only a child.” 

“That’s good, from you! Why, it’s you who be¬ 
lieve in marriage, are always ramming it down the 
girls’ throats.” 

“For girls, not for men.” She was obstinately 
irrational. “How can you be so silly? What 
would I do—” She was going to say, “What 
would I do with a married son?” but caught her¬ 
self up in time. It was hateful not to be able to 
enter into any one of Ronny’s plans, to place her¬ 
self among the middle-aged by any show of opposi- 



158 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


tion; but a thing like this was out of the question. 

“You must never take this son of mine seri¬ 
ously, Miss Rorke. Ridiculous boy, aren’t you, 
Ronny?” She tried to laugh, pass it off as a joke; 
and of course that was what it was, one of Ronny’s 
mad pranks. All the same, laughter had not been 
her first impulse; rather a strange, half-savage de¬ 
sire to shove this chit aside, actually shove—coming 
between her and her son. 

“After all I’ve gone through, doing without him 
all these years!” she thought, with no memory of the 
fun of India—“stuck out in India,” she called it— 
her long youth with Taghmony, the adoration of 
other men. 

Her husband had slipped away from her. Oh, it 
was no good pretending that he hadn’t, and she did 
not much care now that she had Ronny. But she 
must, she must hold on to Ronny—there was noth¬ 
ing else. 

Other men came to her with what began like the 
old story—“You must have seen ...” “Look 
here, Lady Taghmony, there’s something I want to 
tell you ...” “Of course you’ve guessed . . .” 
The prelude was the same, but the main theme dif¬ 
ferent. For in these days their confidences con¬ 
sisted in the tale of their affairs with younger 
women or girls. 

She did not really want them; the disappointment 
was momentary, nothing more. But Ronny!— 
Ronny was different: he was her own son, and she 
couldn’t let him go. There was sex in it, innocent 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


159 


and unguessed at; he took the place of her lost 
adorers; as so many sons do: those adorers she had 
never really cared for save as an excitement, em¬ 
bellishment—a regiment with banners. 

She cared now; was greedy and savage as she 
had never been before. 

Ronny did not mind what she had said, only 
laughed. She was a little darling, too pretty to be 
taken seriously, although she was his mother. He 
went on dancing with Henrietta, infecting her with 
his own spirit of gaiety so that she too had a sort 
of feeling that nothing on earth mattered apart from 
the fact that they loved each other; were young, 
gloriously young, with years and years and years 
of love in front of them. “Nothing can ever come 
between us—nothing, nothing,” she thought. 

On her way home—they had a closed motor now, 
for “there's nothing to life in Ireland except making 
yourself comfortable,” was what Mr. Rorke said— 
her father enquired, quite casually, as though it was 
of no more moment than a half-day’s excursion: 

“What’s this about being engaged to that boy 
Shaen?” 

“We care for each other: we want to be mar¬ 
ried.” Henrietta spoke flatly, chilled and exhausted 
by excitement. 

“Oh well, I suppose you’re the best judge of 
your own affairs, so long as there’s money enough 
between you. Though it seems to me that you’re 
very young—aren’t you?” 

He asked the question tentatively. He wanted to 



160 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

say, ‘‘You’re far too young,” but that seemed too 
much like putting pressure to bear -upon Henrietta, 
degenerating into the old-fashioned father. 

“I’m out of it,” he thought. “I’ve had my time.” 
Young Lord Shaen seemed a bit of a flipitty- 
jibbety; but still, that might be the sort of man 
Henrietta liked. The truth, that this was the only 
young man his daughter had ever really known— 
did not occur to him: he had so scrupulously left 
her at liberty to choose her own friends, he took 
her opportunities for granted. Not that it would 
have made much difference: she was fated for 
Shaen, the moth for the candle. No use pretending 
that—because she was so quiet and reserved and 
seemingly well balanced—a little more opportunity 
for comparison, a few more years, and things might 
have been different, for they would not. Even 
supposed that she had hardened herself to save her¬ 
self, what would have been left? A burnt-out shell, 
nothing more; for repressed fires are the most 
devastating of all, 

Shaen appeared at Greylands late the next morn¬ 
ing in a state of furious indignation. After doing 
and saying nothing to discourage him the night be¬ 
fore, laughing at him, actually congratulating him, 
slapping him on the back, his father had absolutely 
refused to sanction the engagement. Dulled and 
sullen with the effect of late hours and too much 
champagne; with the thought of accumulating years 
and diminishing capital heavy upon him, as it was 
apt to be at such times—up to the luncheon hour let 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


161 


us say, and Shaen had been stupid enough to choose 
the morning—there was no doing anything with 
him. “Making an ass of yourself before you’re 
properly out of the nursery,” that’s what he said. 
“If you go on playing about after that girl, after 
any sort of girl who means marriage, unless she’s a 
thumping heiress, I’ll stop your allowance. Pretty 
you’d look then, without a penny to bless yourself 
with. Anyhow, I give you fair warning. The 
Lord knows I’ve had bother and expense enough 
with you all. Marriage! At your age! Tommy 
rot! By Gad, if you came to me I could tell you 
something of what marriage is like—your mother 
with a tongue like a clapper, on at me all last night. 
Look here, Shaen, if you had a head like mine, 
splitting”—he was suddenly pathetic—“you’d know 
what it is—eternally bothered, pestered as I am, 
not a moment’s peace or quiet in the blessed 
house. Listen to them now", moving furniture or 
some such damned foolery! By God, only listen to 
that!” He put his hand to his head and groaned. 
“I’ll just trouble you to listen to that.” 

There was a steady bump-bump in the next room, 
the piano being amateurishly moved back into its 
proper place. 

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” began Shaen. 

“Nothing to do with it! . . . You and your sis¬ 
ters and all your damned extravagance, dancin’, 
huntin’, racin’—never content to be still for a 
single moment! And then to come to me, talking 
of marriage! Drop it, I tell you, drop it! By 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


162 

Jove, if you were in it for a week all you’d want 
'ud be to get out of it, let me tell you that, young 
man.” 

He spoke of marriage as his wife did of India, 
the gay days wiped out. “Women are so damned 
unfair, they take the best years of a fellow’s life,” 
he complained, for their mutual genius for for¬ 
getting seemed to have swerved all one way. 

“The mater’s been getting at him,” said Shaen, 
“but they’ll repent it, both of them—they’re jolly 
well mistaken if they think they can drive me!” 
He had never felt, or seemed, or indeed been, so 
determined: whatever they said or did he’d marry 
Henrietta. His quarter’s allowance was all gone, 
and neither he nor Henrietta had enough money for 
a license or he would have married her then and 
there, in face of them all. 

Mr. Rorke went over to Clonross and interviewed 
Shaen’s parents. He had no great opinion of the 
young fellow, but this made him all the more deter¬ 
mined to do what he could towards furthering the 
match. But it was all of no use. 

“The boy’s got to marry a fortune, a Yankee, or 
something like that,” was what Lord Taghmony 
said; while his wife broke in to the effect that Ronny 
was “far too young to think of marriage for years 
and years to come.” 

Her small face showed a faint, cobwebby net¬ 
work of fine lines, her blue eyes were pitiful, her 
mouth obstinate, tightly drawn. “I’m sure you 
must agree with me, Mr. Rorke.” Her lips parted 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 163 

with one of the old winning smiles; she hated 
“those Rorkes,” who wanted to rob her of her son, 
but the old trick of fascination had become almost 
mechanical. 

“They want as much for their gimcrack son as 
any old Jew collector for a curio,” thought Rorke; 
then again: “I wonder if she really cares, wonder 
if she could care; cold-blooded little customer, 
Henrietta—takes after me in that,” the while he 
burned with rage at the slight upon his daughter, 
was filled with longing to comfort her, pet her. If 
only he had known how to “get at her,” that’s how 
he put it to himself: if only he had begun earlier, 
if only they were not so queerly far apart, shy of 
each other . . . Oh, well, he supposed that fellow 
Shaen would find a way. Again and again he 
found himself wondering how Shaen made love to 
her, visualising her, his Henrietta, upright and re¬ 
mote as he himself had made her. Anyhow, he 
had done his best to help her to realize her wish and 
it was not his fault if he was to be allowed to keep 
her for a while at least. 


CHAPTER XI 


The more the lovers were apart the nearer they 
were together, or so it seemed. When Shaen was 
away Henrietta had a sensation of being drawn out 
like the flame of a candle toward him; drawn out 
and out so that she felt as though there were noth¬ 
ing left of her, apart from this fine running flame. 

As to Shaen, he was amazed at his own feelings. 
The fact of being kept away from Henrietta main¬ 
tained him at a fever heat, which he took for con¬ 
stancy. “It’s no good their trying to part us, Pm 
never likely to care a hang for anyone else,” he 
wrote to Henrietta; for Lord Taghmony had not 
thought of interdicting letters, when letters were 
such a bore. 

The truth was, Shaen had everything on earth 
that he could want, and this in itself lifted Henri¬ 
etta above the common ruck. It was not all, 
though, for she was like nothing else in life to him 
—the sort of woman that men like him come back 
to, the most that can be expected of them. 

Just now there were no other pleasures; he was 
half proud of, half scared at, his own indifference to 
everything in which he had once delighted; obsessed 
by the picture of his love as he had seen her that 
night of the dance, standing alone in her white 

gown with the dark-curtained doorway behind her; 

164 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 165 

by his mother’s words, “There’ll be no end to the 
broken hearts,” etc. 

Supposing someone else cut him out? He tor¬ 
tured himself with the thought of her in another 
man’s arms; he had imagination enough for that, 
but not enough to realize the depth and breadth of 
her love for him. A good thing too! For once his 
condescension, his triumphant egotism was wiped 
out. He was utterly miserable, doubtful of himself 
and his own powers. “What the deuce can she see in 
me?” he asked himself and that alone shows the 
power which she had over him. 

He was so engrossed that he forgot to get into 
any special mischief and, passing out of Sandhurst 
better than had ever been expected of him, was 
gazetted to a cavalry regiment, depressed by his 
own indifference regarding his uniform, for, like 
all the O'Haras, he loved clothes and everything in 
the way of dressing up. 

It was quite soon after this that Lord Taghmony 
was given an appointment as Governor of one of 
the West Indian Islands; a come-down—though 
they lost sight of that after the first day or so. It 
would be fun starting afresh in a new place, with 
all the stir, the playing-at-dolls’ pomp of Govern¬ 
ment House life. 

“One will be someone there.” That was what 
Lady Taghmony said, living over, once again, her 
best, her earliest years in India. 

It was she who suggested that Ronny should be 
one of his father’s A.D.C.’s. Lord Taghmony’s 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


166 

feelings upon the subject were mixed: a grown-up 
son might be in the way when one wished to “play 
about.” But there was another side to it: Ronny 
could keep his mother quiet and contented, leaving 
him to “shake a loose leg,” as he himself expressed 
it. The older he got the more this desire ruled 
him—to do as he liked, to have an unceasingly good 
time. It was the same with his wife, though in a 
different way. It was as if the two of them were 
drinking out of cups which must be continually 
filled up, so that they never quite reached the dregs. 
As years passed they became desperately flurried 
and eager over this, never able to rest, fearful of 
what they called “wasting time,” leaving any single 
hour unpacked with pleasure. 

Lady Taghmony’s interest and pride in her girls 
was abating a little. Honora was engaged, would 
be married before they left England,, and Denise 
had one specially suitable admirer. The girl’s lazy 
disinclination to make up her mind exasperated her 
mother, and she almost pushed her into his arms. 
Teddy was just coming out. She felt as though 
she had had enough of daughters, of all her chil¬ 
dren. “They were so sweet when they were little 
and I was kept away from them in that miserable 
India,” she thought; meanwhile all that she wanted 
was Ronny. 

He himself was doubtful about the West Indian 
plan. “It would be different if I were married,” 
he said, with a cold, sidelong glance at his mother. 
“That sort of thing’s all very well if a fellow’s mar- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 167 

r 

ried. I’d have my own home then, but a man 
doesn’t want to live with his parents.” 

He was annoyed with her and her caresses; they 
meant nothing if she would not help him to what he 
wanted. As for his father, he was Puritanical in 
his disapproval of his goings on. 

Anyhow he declared that he must join his regi¬ 
ment for a while at least: “then we’ll see.” That’s 
what he said, determined to make his marriage with 
Henrietta the price of his consent. Lady Tagh- 
mony realised this. It seemed that everyone was 
getting very hard and cruel to her in these days. 
People’s expression had changed, it was slighting; 
just a little contemptuous, or what was really worse, 
dutiful, unbiassed by glamour. She had been a 
good match-maker out of her own extravagant 
plenty. All that was at an end now and she grudged 
youth to youth. If Ronny turned against her, per¬ 
sisted in marrying that Rorke girl, it would be the 
last straw: “I couldn’t stand it.” It was the old 
phrase. 

They were all over at Clonross for one week be¬ 
fore Lord Taghmony took up his appointment; for 
the place was to be let and there was a great deal of 
packing up and away to be got through. 

Shaen could not show himself at Greylands. “So 
long as his people objected to it, don’t you think— 
not here, eh? For the sake of your own pride, my 
dear . . .” The sentence was not even completed, 
but it was the nearest thing in the way of a mandate 
that Philip Rorke had ever embarked upon with his 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


168 

daughter. They were getting further and further 
apart, watching each other wistfully: like some di¬ 
vided couple, with the water widening between ship 
and shore. 

“She thinks nothing, cares for nobody, but that 
young Shaen,” was what he thought. But he was 
wrong there, as he had always been in his estimate 
as to what youth wants: better, perhaps, to fidget 
with a child’s heart than leave it altogether alone, 
make no sort of claim upon it. 

As it was, Henrietta—all sore for some sign of 
affection—thought of her father as indifferent, if 
not disapproving; or perhaps too indifferent for dis¬ 
approval, wondering if he had greatly cared for her 
mother, knew what love was; thrown back for her 
one solace upon Shaen with no single interest be¬ 
tween them—apart from feeling, maternal and pas¬ 
sionate; with so much kept back, even then, for 
fear of boring him. 

She would not allow him to come to Greylands, 
while she herself would not go to Clonross—she 
was too proud for that. But no pride on earth 
could have kept them altogether apart; they had one 
long evening on the lakes together and after that a 
wonderful early morning ride up the Slieve My shall 
mountains, the short, slippery grass drenched with 
dew, the sheep all silvered over, still moithered with 
sleep; gathered together, standing staring. 

The plain beneath them was veiled in blue mist, 
the lakes just one shade lighter. 

Rather more than half-way up they came upon a 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


169 


shallow cave in the mountain side; a plateau of 
greener grass in front of it, brocaded in harebells; 
a little lake black and shining like onyx, the water 
icy cold, as they found when they dismounted to 
drink. 

“If only we could live up here. There are any 
amount of blackcock; we might bribe a boy to bring 
up bread from Clogrhoe twice a week and camp in 
the cave. We’d drive up a cow and tether it; I’d 
teach you to milk,” said Shaen, dreamily for him. 
In that mountain air, at once stimulating and sooth¬ 
ing, the simplest life seemed possible. “Why 
should we live apart, make ourselves miserable, when 
everything might be so jolly easy, when we might 
be so happy? Come to think about it, we might 
do without that rotten allowance—that ’ud be one in 
the eye for my father.” 

“Winter would come.” 

“But winter wouldn’t last for ever.” 

He was full of the idea, talked of it throughout 
the whole ride back, quieter and more wistful than 
she had ever seen him. 

“I believe that’s the way to be happy. Just the 
one person one loves—the darlingest person in the 
world, and plenty of fresh air, no one else to 1 come 
butting in. After all, it would be no one’s business 
but our own if we chose to live like that,” he said, 
as they parted on the road between Greylands and 
Clonross. 

It seemed so easy like this, put into plain words: 
“No one’s business but our own,” so true, so obvious 


170 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


—on the face of it. No wonder that youth banks 
upon the phrase. And yet how difficult to put into 
practise so long as middle age holds the purse¬ 
strings, ties youth up by them, entangled with in¬ 
numerable small threads, necessities, obligations, 
habits; jerking up the cords tight, like an old lady 
with a string bag; knotting them with those ominous 
words, “the future.” 

Everything was ready packed up at Clonross, and 
Shaen’s family expected him to leave at the same 
time as they did, expected him into it, as one might 
say. He was on the whole easy-going, used to 
running with the flock, and—oh well, it was useless 
to pretend that there was nothing in the world apart 
from Henrietta Rorke: a week of theatres and other 
gaieties in London with his people, there was some 
recompense there; and pretty rough luck to refuse 
them that, just before they sailed, he thought; and 
then again: “No knowing what may turn up, they 
may change their minds about Hal. Til give them 
a week, just one week to change their minds. Any¬ 
how, I’ll be back within ten days. Hal, my Hal, 
you’ll never stop thinking of me for a moment, a 
single moment, will you?” 

That was what he said, dashing over to Grey- 
lands in his little car at the very last moment, care¬ 
less as to who saw him or what was said; finding 
Henrietta alone in the octagonal morning-room, 
drawing a little apart to look at her, with her head 
lying back upon his arm: “The loveliest eyes in 
the world, Hal. Deuced hard luck to love a girl 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


171 

with the loveliest eyes in the world and have to 
leave her! Look here, I’ll make you wear a green 
shade when we’re married. I’ll have no other fel¬ 
low looking into them, losing himself in them as 
I’ve done. Hang it all, how is it possible to say 
good-bye—when all I want is to stay here with you, 
hold you in my arms, never to let you go! I can’t 
stand leaving you! Why should I stand it? 
They’ve no business to ask it of a fellow. . . . Hal, 
Hal darling—my darling.” It was always this, 
“darling—darling”; never “dearest,” so much 
deeper, more significant: the two words so seldom 
used by the same person. 

A wild, a ridiculously wild and passionate part¬ 
ing—for ten days only! Well, no, not altogether 
that, for time slipped away. Shaen found it im¬ 
possible to come straight back to Ireland when his 
people left; ten days—twenty days—a month and 
more passed by. 

“Never, never stop thinking of me—I couldn’t 
stand that. It’s bad enough as it is, stuck down 
here in this beastly hole, without a soul to speak to,” 
he wrote from Aldershot, new to soldiering, delight¬ 
ing in it, immensely popular. “Helpless as a rat in 
a trap.” Ah, well, he wrote when he was alone, 
and he could not be alone without feeling lonely; 
there are people like that! 

Never, never to stop thinking of him! Little 
enough need to write that to Henrietta Rorke, with 
his kisses tingling afresh upon her lips at every re¬ 
minder of him. Not really thinking, though—try- 



IJ2 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


ing to think, to focus things, their life together or 
apart—but in reality just feeling: with feeling like 
a warm wind sweeping through her, blowing out 
the curtains of her mind—feeling, remembering and 
living back. 

There was this letter, one or two more, a long 
silence, and then, at the end of close upon two 
months, a short, almost illegible scrawl, filled with 
that obstinate, passionate desire for her presence 
aroused in him by any sudden opposition or diffi¬ 
culty. 

There was some sort of climax in the trouble be¬ 
tween his parents, and his mother had written him a 
letter, as frantic as any one of his own, begging 
him to get leave and come out to them, if only for 
a few weeks. 

“I have nobody in the world but you*,” she said, 
and added, “Perhaps if you were out here you 
could do something to keep your father within the 
bounds of decency. He must be mad; everyone’s 
talking. It will come to this very soon: they’ll be 
talking of him and not speaking to him—” Al¬ 
most every word was underlined; and then, with a 
faggot of lines beneath it, came: “I know I shall 
go mad i'f I am left here alone with him. You 
must come—you must, you must!” 

“I suppose I’ve got to go, but I must see you 
again first. I must—I must!” That was Shaen’s 
letter to Henrietta, the underlinings and dashes cut¬ 
ting the paper. “Ten to one I’ll never be able to 





ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 173 

get home again, once I’m there. Anything may 
happen!” 

The Celtic strain in his nature was uppermost; 
fate was against them. “Ten to one I’ll die of 
fever; something’s bound to happen. For good¬ 
ness’ sake don’t let me down now; I have a sort of 
feeling that something will happen to come between 
us/’ 

Mr. Rorke was in Dublin, Lady Fair at Clonross, 
having gone over to disentangle some of her own 
possessions before the new tenants moved in. 

When Henrietta met Shaen at Castle ford, driv¬ 
ing the dogcart which her father had lately bought 
for her—something in the way of a consolation 
prize—the question was where were they to go— 
what were they to do with themselves? Shaen 
talked, ran on and on and on, but it was all on 
the top of himself; underneath there was that 
jammed-up feeling which comes to people who have 
a very short time in which to say everything that 
they want to say. 

The same thing was tight in Henrietta’s breast, 
pressing round her heart: she was stuffed very tight 
and buttoned down like an old-fashioned sofa or 
armchair. She could never tell Shaen how much 
she thought of him, make him understand; he 
would go away, and perhaps it was true that she 
would never see him again. The dark forebod¬ 
ings of youth were heavy upon her, for it is folly 
to speak of the young as being consistently hopeful. 


174 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


He would go away and perhaps he would die. 

Forgetful of her own life in India, Henrietta was 
terrified of the Tropics; that hint of fever had 
stricken her to her heart—that heart which seemed 
to be bared, literally waiting for the wound. 
Shaen would die, and the dreadful blank of his loss, 
the long waste of years, would be like a thicket of 
thorns, sharp with the remembrance of how 
little she had ever done to prove her love for 
him. 

Even now she could not let him come to Grey- 
lands. To Shaen’s mind the fact of her father be¬ 
ing away from home gave them a wonderful chance. 
She felt herself grudging and cruel for opposing 
the idea; it was agony for her to refuse him any¬ 
thing; but here were her father’s plain orders, as 
plain as he ever gave them, and the more binding 
for that. Anything which concerned herself alone, 
anything—and she had no faintest idea of all that 
“anything” might comprise—was Shaen’s for the 
asking. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him— 
nothing!” she told herself, with the desperate 
fervour of the inarticulate. All she wanted was 
some chance to show him a little of all that she 
found it so impossible to put into words. 

Though it was the last week in September it was 
one of those breathlessly hot days of an Indian sum¬ 
mer, unexpected and fierce as the passions of a 
later life. Henrietta drove slowly; they did not 
know what to do or where to go. It was difficult 
to* formulate any special thought, for their love, the 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


175 


near prospect of their parting, lay heavy upon them, 
weighing them down so that their very limbs were 
languid. 

Shaen’s stream of talk sluiced off him, leaving 
him profoundly distressed. He had a feeling that 
he would like to rest his head upon Henrietta’s 
shoulder and groan; he was like Job. If he could 
have clasped her to him, pressed her lips to his, it 
might have assuaged his thirst; as it was, he felt 
parched up and empty and dull; he had never been 
like that before, and it frightened him. 

“What the devil are we to do with ourselves ?” 
he inquired disconsolately. “Aunt Gertie’s at Clon- 
ross. You won’t come there, even to please me, 
and you won’t have me at Greylands—come to think 
of it, there’s precious little you will do for me.” 
He paused, stooping, hunched together at Henri¬ 
etta’s side; his handsome pale face, with a sallowish 
tinge, as it was apt to be in his rare moments of 
mental depression. “Hang it all, I didn’t come over 
to Ireland to spend the evening with Gertie, cluck¬ 
ing like an old hen!” 

A sudden idea came to Henrietta. “Why 
shouldn’t we have supper—a sort of supper picnic 
up on the mountains?” It was a tentative sugges¬ 
tion, for she did not know how Shaen would take 
it. As a matter of fact, he was so different to her¬ 
self she never knew how he would take anything. 

He was enchanted, however; the colour flooded 
up into his cheeks ; it seemed as though his skin 
actually cleared; his eyes brightened. 



176 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


‘•‘The very thing! Oh, I say, Hal, wha,t a per¬ 
fectly topping idea.!’* 

“If I drop you at the gates of Clonross, and go 
back to Greylands, Cooky can get us some food 
ready, and I’ll get Jimmy to saddle Grizel while I 
change.” 

“Hal—Hal—by Jove, you’re a geniils! I’ll slip 
round to the stable and get Pale Ale, and come along 
the road to meet you.’' 

It seemed as though they were awakened out of 
a sort of trance, alive once more. Henrietta was 
singing as she changed into her riding kit; the 
whole world moved off to the same tune, and Jimmy 
broke off his whistle to grin, rubbing down Grizel 
with a soft cloth in her loose box, blacking her 
hoofs, polishing her bit. He knew what was up; 
they all knew—though goodness knows how!— 
identified themselves with the romance. “Miss 
Henrietta an’ the young lord”—maybe it was the 
red-haired cook who gave the hint: running out to 
the stables, smiling all over her face with the in¬ 
formation that sandwiches and cake had been or¬ 
dered for two. 

“He’s back again—bless ’em an’ save ’em, the 
pretty dears!” She scurried, fat and short-legged, 
running like a beetle, with any number of little steps, 
to the front of the house, and leant out of the 
drawing-room window to tell the gardener, busy 
mowing the lawn. Patsy, the aged boot-boy, had 
to know. “It’s by the mercy o’ God that you gave 
that extry fine lick o’ polish to them there riding- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


177 


boots o’ Miss Henrietta, for he's back—the young 
lord’s back, an’ it will be a quare kind o’ a shame if 
there’s not a wedding at Clogrhoe afore the year’s 
out. I tauld ye that a whileen back; but there’s 
none that listens to old Cooky come these days!” 
She tossed her red head; she wasn’t old, and she 
knew it—not to say old—and love was in the air. 

The sandwiches were a trifle delayed by all the 
talk which eddied round Henrietta. Not a serv¬ 
ant at Greylands, with her head out of the window, 
not a stable lad or garden boy, but had his eyes on 
her—cunning and sly as small wild animals—when 
she rode down the drive to meet Shaen. 

It was after five; there had been no time or 
thought for tea, but they stopped at a farm near 
the foot of the mountain for a glass of milk; Shaen 
—the man—with a dash of whisky in his. 

It was so hot that they thought of it as summer; 
but autumn revealed herself with a veil of grey soon 
after six, spreading it out, all sun-shot, over the 
plains beneath them as they mounted, winding up¬ 
wards very slowly, for the short sun-baked turf was 
as slippery as glass. 

Their plateau lay full in the sun. Shaen took off 
the horses’ saddles, knotted up the reins and let them 
graze. He and Henrietta lay flat upon the edge 
of the plateau and gazed down at the world beneath 
them: the shining lakes; Clogrhoe like a pale patch 
filled round with straggling grey wool stretches, 
wisps of smoke; the river a slender thread, and then 
a widening scarf of mist as evening fell. 


i ;8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Fell! Rose rather, slowly mounting, uplifting 
them upon it far above tlie world, with their own 
plateau—their own small lake, black and shining as 
a magic carpet. Even the horses felt the loneliness, 
the mystery; leaning against each other, keeping 
close to them. 

Shaen, usually so demonstrative, had not so much 
as touched Henrietta’s hand; they lay apart, with 
their limbs straight out, their chins cupped in their 
palms; while even he was silent save for an occa¬ 
sional long-drawn sigh, overcome by a strange sense 
of lassitude, dragging him down, pressing him into 
the earth. The heat of the day, even at that hour, 
added to the physical oppression. They could not 
see the sun set, nothing but a thick yellowish haze 
with a blurred core of crimson above the low-lying 
hill lands at the further side of the plain. 

He gathered himself together suddenly, sat up. 

“Look here, Hal, it’s supper-time, but do you 
mind if I have a bathe first? I feel most fright¬ 
fully slack for some reason or other.” 

“All right, and I’ll unpack the supper, so that it’ll 
be ready when you are.” 

Shaen had brought a bottle of white wine and a 
couple of bottles of soda-water in a rush basket, 
packed round with hay and hung to his saddle; they 
had tied a long string, fastened one end to a rock, 
and sunk them in the lake to cool. He fetched 
them now, put them down on the smooth turf where 
Henrietta was unpacking the basket, then hesitated 
a moment, staring into the distances below him, not 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


179 


looking at Henrietta, “it doesn’t seem real some¬ 
how, just you and I—and this.” He waved one 
arm, speaking, with an odd sort of awkwardness, 
as though words were difficult, then went off for 
his bathe. 

The tiny lake was in a hollow sheltered by black 
rocks. Henrietta heard a deep “P-f-f-lump!” as he 
plunged. “Supposing he were to sink; supposing 
he were drowned?” she thought: a stupid thought, 
for he could swim like a fish. 

Cooky had given them an abundant supply, sym¬ 
bol of her overflowing heart: enough to live on for 
a week, thought Henrietta, remembering Shaen’s 
wild idea of them setting up house together, or, 
rather, setting up cave-keeping here on the moun¬ 
tains. 

He came back at the end of a short ten minutes, 
his hands full of harebells—how ridiculous to think 
that he could ever be drowned, that anything could 
happen to him with all that life in him; to keep on 
thinking that something must happen to him be¬ 
cause she loved him! Drowning!—she had a horror 
of drowning: the- dreadful chill of it, the indifference 
of the water which made nothing of you, the earth so 
different, with its grasses, its flowers. 

Shaen was in his shirt and trousers, his dark hair 
wet, with little drops at the ends of it, his face shin¬ 
ing and full of colour; the whites of his eyes were 
almost as blue as the iris had been half an hour 
earlier, all his lassitude gone. 

He insisted on twisting the pale flowers in among 


i8o 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Henrietta’s hair, hung them drooping above her 
brow: “Eyes like lakes, an’ these thingummy-jigs 
hanging just the same way, reflected in them.” 

His cool hands, busied round her face, smelt of 
the water. 

“I must go and wash my own hands,” she said, 
and ran off, rinsing her face too, lying down on the 
warm rock at the edge of the pool, splashing water 
so that hair and harebells were sparkling. 

By the time their little feast was over it was al¬ 
most dark. 

They had been very lighthearted, seized with a 
fancy for fancying: Fancy if we did this—fancy 
if we did that; “build a castle up here with preci¬ 
pices for battlements”—that was Henrietta’s idea. 
Shaen picked up the ball, kept it rolling: “Fancy if 
we lived in the desert—somewhere in Arabia— 
pretty decent, that—tents like Arabs—hundreds and 
hundreds and hundreds of horses; mare’s milk and 
potheen—we’d brew our own potheen. ... No 
barley? Not grown there? Hang it all, we’d 
make it grow. ... A harem in Egypt—how’d you 
like that, Hal? Queen of the harem? 

“Fancy if I were the Governor and you the 
Governor’s wife—emeralds in your hair—those are 
the stones for you—emeralds, to go with your eyes 
more than half green! Fancy if we lived up here 
for always, never went down—clothes!—sheepskins 
in winter and . . . oh, the Lord knows what in 
summer! What was it Brian O’Flynn wore? The 






ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 181 

woolly side out and the skinny side in—that’s the 
idea.” 

With the end of the meal their spirits dropped; 
they were overcome by a sense of inexplicable melan¬ 
choly, hanging over them, weighing them down. 
It was Henrietta who broke the silence. 

“You must get the horses saddled, it’s almost 
dark—we’ll have to go at foot’s pace all the way.” 

“What will they say at Greylands?” 

“There are only the servants”—“Only the serv¬ 
ants!”—there was youth for you!*—“But if Lady 
Fair's at Clonross, she may be worrying.” 

“She doesn’t know.” 

“Doesn’t know what?” 

“That I’m over here. Why should she? 
Shaen’s voice was boyishly defiant. 

Henrietta, who had pushed aside a small sunken 
rock and was on her knees burying the scraps of 
paper beneath it, raised her head and stared, peer¬ 
ing at Shaen—it was dark enough for that. “But, 
oh, Ronny, she must know—you got the wine and 
stuff.” 

“I sent Tim in the back way for it.” 

“But the butler?” 

“There’s no butler—all the servants have gone; 
only Brigid and Tim; they’ll never tell, trust them 
for that.” 

“But why—why?” She was puzzled, by Shaen, 
puzzled by herself. Why had she told no one that 
she was going out riding with him—just asked the 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


182 

cook for sandwiches for two: scarcely even that. 
“You might cut enough for two”—no more, with 
no idea of their forming their own opinions, she 
who was usually so considerate of servants. Not 
that there was anything to hide, only . . . Oh, well, 
being there with Ronny, wrapped above the world, 
as it were, no one knowing of it, that added to the 
preciousness, the wonder. She did not want to de¬ 
ceive anyone, only to keep it to herself. But 
Ronny’s aunt—that was a different affair; she liked 
Lady Fair, would hate her to feel hurt, out of it. 

“Oh, well, we must go now—she’ll be sure to hear 
and expect to see something of you. It will be 
dark, as it is, long before we get home.” She turned 
towards the horses, then hesitated, glanced back. 

Shaen was still standing at the edge of the 
plateau, dropping pebbles aimlessly into the depth 
beneath him. 

“Ronny!” 

He did not turn, and she went over to him, slipped 
her arm in his. “Ronny, truly we must go; it will 
be difficult enough getting down as it is. . . . 
Ronny dear!” 

There was something heavy and unyielding about 
the very feel of his arm. “We shan’t want any¬ 
thing more to eat to-night,” he said, and it sounded 
as though he were arguing against somebody; stand¬ 
ing there immovable, turned away from her: he 
who was, in general, so quick and responsive. 

“No, but still . . .” Quite suddenly she was 
scared. “Ronny, Ronny, we simply must go!” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 183 

“I can’t see any reason”; his tone was sullen. 

She tried to laugh. “Oh, but we must—” 

“Why? Why? Tell me why?” He was still 
turned aside from her, looking away from her, with 
no sign of feeling her tug upon his arm: speaking 
in a detached, abrupt way as though to someone 
with whom he was feeling out of temper, had a 
grieving against. 

“But we must.” 

“Why—in Heaven’s name, why? There’s no 
must about it.” 

“We can’t stay here all night”; her voice broke 
on a tremulous laugh. 

“What’s the good of saying that? Why can’t 
we stay here—why?” He swung round and caught 
her by both wrists, as though he were suddenly gal¬ 
vanised into life; his heart was beating so that she 
could feel it shaking through him. “Look here, 
Hal”; he spoke hoarsely, so quickly that the words 
tumbled over each other: “they won’t let us do as 
we like with our lives. We want to do the right 
thing and they simply won’t let us. They’ve had 
their own lives and now they want to have ours! 
Hang it all! I’m grown up and you’re grown up. 
I’m a man and I have feelings like a man—things 
are just as bad for me as they are for any man, just 
as hard on me—eternally jaggin’ at me. Years ago 
boys of fifteen were married, counted as men. 
One’s people have no right to pretend that one’s a kid 
when one’s just on twenty—it’s a damned shame; 
just to please themselves—it’s rotten—rotten! 


184 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


If I lived to a hundred I could never love anyone 
better than I love you—want anyone more fright¬ 
fully. And there they are, going on all the time 
bein’ married and—oh, well, all that—going on and 
on after years and years of it; expecting us to play 
at being sainted kids! I can’t stand it—don’t see 
why anyone should stand it. Look here, why, at 
Sandhurst—oh, and at Eton—in my regiment, too 
—they talk about women all the time; the air’s thick 
with it. Just women, not caring for anyone in par¬ 
ticular. I don’t want to make a beast of myself; 
I want to be married to you. A fellow doesn’t feel 
like that, all over the shop, once he’s married— 
even if we really belonged to each other it would 
be different. 

“■Look here, Hal darling, you can’t understand 
because you’re a girl; and girls like you—so fright¬ 
fully pure—and sweet—and all that. . . .” His 
voice trailed off for a moment, then went on slur¬ 
ring words: “Oh, well, you simply don’t know.” 

His hands, sliding up Henrietta’s arm under the 
loose sleeve of her riding-coat, were cold; it seemed 
that he was not holding her so much as holding on 
to her, clinging to her, his usually fresh-coloured 
face pale in that queer, unreal light. 

They had caught the last rays of the sun, but it 
was all gone now; even their height, looking due 
west, did nothing to help them. The air was not 
exactly misty, more like a blue-grey veil through 
which their faces looked different, unreal to each 
other; that sort of light by which people imagine 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


i 85 

that they can see a long way and are surprised to 
find themselves cut off with a horizon but little be¬ 
yond their arm’s length. Very soon now the eve¬ 
ning would clear, determine itself into the night, as 
women settle down, quite suddenly, to middle age; 
people would light their little lamps in the cottage 
windows of the valley below them; the moon would 
rise, a sprinkling of stars pierce the sky. 

Just now, however, they were cut off from the 
world as they knew it, from everyone in it. The 
horses must have felt the loneliness, for first Grizel 
and then Pale Ale neighed. Henrietta could not 
hear their hooves on the thick short turf, but she 
could hear their breath drawing nearer. 

“Hal, Hal!” He made no attempt to draw her 
to him, but she could feel his fingers pressing deep 
into her forearm. “Look here, I’m going away to¬ 
morrow. I’ll be sailing in a couple of days. God 
only knows what may happen—I’m perfectly certain 
something will happen to keep us apart. Look here 
—Hal—Hal—you—” 

He took one hand away from her arm and fin¬ 
gered the brooch in front of her white lawn blouse, 
panting as thought he had been running. “If we 
really belonged to each other—really—” 

Henrietta’s mouth opened, rounded as though she 
were going to say something, but no words came. 
She was cold from head to foot, with a chilled, 
stripped feeling, as though nothing but the eve¬ 
ning air enwrapped her. 

“Hal—Hal—this one night to ourselves—we’ve 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


186 

never had any time to ourselves,” he muttered. 

“I can’t—oh, Ronny, I can’t.” 

“There’s a pile of dried grass in the cave. I 
noticed it last time we were here, and it’s still there, 
dry as a bone. It’s going to be a hot night—hot as 
midsummer; it can’t hurt you. We’ll get back in 
time for breakfastA It seemed as though he in¬ 
sisted upon material trifles, rendering the abnormal 
normal in his own eyes. 

“It’s not that, but . . . Oh, you must see, I—” 
She was going to say, “I can’t stay here alone with 
you,” but was checked by the childish idea that it 
sounded so like pretending to be grown up. After 
all, why should she not stay? He would not ask 
her to do anything wrong. Her thoughts, misty 
and blurred, wavered to and fro with her longing 
to show how much she loved him, trusted him, was 
willing to accede to anything he asked. 

One must remember that she had no mother, had 
never even lived in the house with married people. 
She had pets, realized the bare facts of birth; for 
the rest, her knowledge of life was so fragmentary 
and broken up that none of the separate pieces fitted 
into each other. What did it matter whether she 
and Shaen were married or not if they wished to 
spend this one night up in the mountains together: 
there could be nothing wrong in that, nothing what¬ 
ever. And yet, all this, in itself so clear, so cer¬ 
tain, was confused, shaken through and through, 
by a multitude of feelings like shuttles racing to and 
fro through the main warp of reason, too quick 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


187 


for her mind’s eye to catch them; interwoven with 
her passionate desire to please Shaen, not to fail 
him in the one thing he had ever really asked of her, 
not to funk. . . . Ah, there it was, and with it, part 
of it, that scurrying sense of something that scared 
her, not so much in him as in herself, something 
altogether strange and overwhelming. 

There were only two ways open to her, nothing 
between. She must run—not wait to get her horse, 
but run, trusting to her own feet—speed away down 
the mountain side as fast as they would carry her 
—or else stay, stay all night. And why not? “To 
camp out.” She tried to steady herself with the 
words, as Shaen, with his talk of dry hay; and all 
the while it felt as though her heart were loose, do¬ 
ing as it liked with itself. 

“You said you’d do anything for me,” pleaded 
Shaen; “you said it, you know you did. 'Anything 
apart from letting you come to Greylands while 
father’s away’; you know you did! You can’t 
go back on that—you can’t go back on your prom¬ 
ise—let me down now when I love you so fright¬ 
fully.” 

He touched her there; her pride in her given 
word, her far deeper humility. No one else loved 
her; what sort of price was she putting upon herself 
to this one person who did? 

“Hal, Hal—if you love me!” He must have felt 
her weakening, for he was drawing her to him; she 
could see his eyes through the dusk, large and shin¬ 
ing. “Hal—Hal, my darling, if you care for me— 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


188 

I am going away to-morrow. If we once belong 
to each other I must come back. Oh, don’t you see, 
I must, must come back, nothing can keep us apart 
after’’—he hesitated a moment, his voice dropped; 
they were both panting now, trembling from head to 
foot—“after that.” 

There was no longer any argument of right 
or wrong, kindness or unkindness, in Henrietta’s 
mind; it was as though her intensity of feeling, her 
love for Shaen, surged up like a great wave within 
her, taking her breath, holding her heart from beat¬ 
ing, buffeting her out of all thought. 

She let him draw her into his arms, hold her 
close, cover her closed eyes, face and neck with 
kisses ; clinging to him as though she were drown¬ 
ing; the two of them so closely pressed together 
that it seemed as though their bodies were one, as 
though nothing could ever separate them again. 

An hour later it was Shaen who was in her 
arms, asleep, with his head upon her breast. One 
of her arms enfolded him, with that queer motherli¬ 
ness which comes to women momentarily at the end 
of their passion; the other hand was upon his dark 
hair, smoothing it back from his brow; her own 
eyes were wide open, staring in front of her. 

The moon was at its full, clear and hard in the 
pale indigo sky, framed by the dark mouth of the 
shallow cave. From where Flenrietta Rorke lay 
there was nothing visible apart from this; the black 
arch of the cave, the clear sky; the moon cold and 
aloof, unsoftened by the faintest wisp of cloud. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


189 


It was like being on the very edge of the world, 
hung out on a balcony above space. A sense of 
deep calm, far more mature than her years, en¬ 
wrapped her; everyone she had ever known, every¬ 
thing she had ever done or been, the whole fabric 
of everyday life, had dropped away from her, here 
at her lover’s side, their arms enfolded; nothing 
mattered, ever could matter. With the arrogance 
of youth, even the humblest-minded, she felt her¬ 
self armed against the world, secure for ever. 
More than once Shaen stirred, caressing her with 
sleep-laden words of endearment, then falling back 
into oblivion. She herself did not close her eyes; 
it seemed that this wonderful night might go on 
for ever, infinitely sweet and unchanging: as though 
she were embarked upon some strange sea, enchanted 
and shoreless and for ever calm; at once the journey 
and the journey’s end. 


CHAPTER XII 


They said good-bye to each other where the road 
from the mountains and over the further bridge 
cut that serving Greylands and Clonross, running 
to Castleford in one direction, to Ballymacdaugh 
Ballina in the other. 

Shaen had to smuggle himself into his own house, 
get hold of a change of clothes and a meal without 
disturbing his aunt, and make his way by car to 
Ballymacdaugh Junction, the only station where he 
could pick up the morning train. 

They were both stiff with lying upon the hard 
ground, with its inadequate mattress of hay; and 
cold, for towards morning the air had grown dank. 
Their clothes hung damply upon them, and they 
were very humanly hungry. 

Henrietta had thought that the whole world would 
be changed, set to a different tune from that one 
night. No wedding ceremony on earth could have 
made her feel more completely consecrated than the 
silence, the aloofness, the purity of the air; lying 
there in the intensely clear moonlight it had seemed 
that nothing earthly, no sort of jar or misunder¬ 
standing, could ever touch them again, blur their 
happiness; and yet from Shaen’s first real awaken¬ 
ing that’s what it was—blurred. 

190 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


191 

Once up he was all impatience to be off: impa¬ 
tient with himself, with her; with the catching and 
saddling of the horses. 

Looking back over that morning, there seemed to 
Henrietta so little that she could remember apart 
from this dulled and rather sullen sense of flurry. 

One incident alone remained clear in her mind. 
Thinking that Shaen was still asleep, she was slip¬ 
ping away for a bathe in the little lake, when he 
turned, flung out one arm to the place where she 
had been and, opening his eyes, called her name, 
sharply, as though in a sort of panic. 

“Hal—Hal! Oh, there you are! What are you 
doing? Where are you going?” 

“I was going to have a bathe.” 

“In the lake? You musn’t do that! Come 
back, you little silly! Do you hear—Hal! Why, 
you can’t swim—it’s deep as blazes, and you can’t 
swim! By God, it’s a jolly good thing I awoke 
when I did!” 

She remembered this, for the poor reason that he 
did not seem to want her out of his sight, was 
frightened for her. For the rest, there was that 
flatness and confusion, that sense of illimitable 
weariness of body and soul. 

Even when they parted—leaning towards each 
other, clinging together, their horses’ sides pressed 
close—it was still there, and Shaen, for all his irri¬ 
tation, felt it almost as much as she did: bereft of 
words, uttering her name with a sort of groan: 
“Hal—Hal . . 


192 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


He wrote her a very manly letter immediately 
upon his arrival in England. He was at his best in 
that, and Henrietta kept it apart from all his other 
letters—badly written, slangy, with uncertain spell¬ 
ing—as a set standard of what he really was. 

That was before he got his mother's cablegram, 
the actual morning upon which he was to have 
sailed: 

“Don’t come. Starting home to-day; can’t stand it 
any longer.” 



CHAPTER XIII 


Henrietta Rorke and Shaen were married in the 
second week in December. In the short interval 
since that mad night on Slieve Myshall it seemed 
that Henrietta had grown: not only grown up— 
that was very evident—but increased in stature; 
perhaps it was that she had become even slimmer, 
held herself more upright than ever. Her oval face 
had lost the curves of childhood; it was paler than 
it had been, the colour came and went fitfully, her 
lips, the same smooth, pale red lips, were more 
closely folded; her hair—with no touch of any 
brighter colour, gold or red—intensified the bril¬ 
liancy of her eyes, most often the colour of an un¬ 
peeled hazel wand, was drawn back from her fore¬ 
head in a way which was at that time entirely out of 
fashion, twisted into a thick knot at the back of 
her head. 

She had been a pretty, sedate child; she was 
beautiful now: so beautiful that strangers turned 
round and looked at her in the street; on the coun¬ 
try roads the country people blessed her as she 
passed. Everyone, it seemed, was anxious to please 
her, stand well with her. Behind her back they 
might, and did, tattle, detract; but actually facing 
her they were deferential, on their best behaviour. 
All of this was in curious contrast to her own deep 

193 


194 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


humility, bewilderment: that sense of life as a 
strange house where she was never altogether at 
home, certain of what lay behind the doors she 
opened. 

She could not master the point of view of other, 
ordinary people in connection with what she had 
done. Her father tried to explain it to her, but 
without much success. The fact was that he had 
impressed upon her so completely, and for so long, 
the necessity for independence, the right she had to 
form her own opinion, take her own line, that he 
was in the position of a man who has carefully 
locked up a box with some treasure in it and then 
lost the key. 

She tried hard to master his point of view: she 
knew that what he said was in its own way right. 
But it did not seem right to her, and it was impos¬ 
sible for her to make herself feel that it was right; 
any more than it was possible to make herself feel 
that the thing which she had done was wrong. 

She could never love anyone else in the same way 
that she loved Shaen, and it would have made no 
real difference if a clergyman of her own Church 
or any other Church had blessed their union. Her 
father had never instructed her in any of the ele¬ 
ments of religion; she must abide by what her con¬ 
science told her, that was what he had said, and in 
this her conscience was clear. If she had been a 
selfish beast—she had a way of catching up Shaen’s 
phraseology—guarded herself, ruled her conduct by 
the thought of what other people might say or think 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


195 


—and in truth she had no conception of this as it 
might be—and he had gone out to the West Indies, 
perhaps died of fever, what would she have felt 
like then? Then, indeed, there would have been 
something with which to reproach herself. The 
fact that he didn’t go after all made no real dif¬ 
ference; she would have felt meaner still if she 
had held back thinking that he might not go. 

This was one of the things that bewildered her, 
this and the way in which her father—who had al¬ 
ways seemed so cool and cynical, had never appeared 
to care over much about anything one way or an¬ 
other—went to pieces over it all: his obsession with 
the fear of scandal, his grief; above all, his self- 
reproach. “It must be something in the way I 
brought you up. I muddled it somehow or other. 
I ought to have married again; got a woman to look 
after you. But I always thought that girls had . . . 
oh, well, a sort of instinct.” By this he meant an 
instinct for putting a very proper price upon them¬ 
selves, and not that instinct, so very much stronger, 
which is—all said and done—responsible for the 
perpetuation of the race. 

Still, artificial as his estimate might seem, it was 
right in so far as it went—the trouble is that it 
did not go further—had shown itself in the almost 
overwhelming desire for flight which had swept 
across Henrietta that night on the mountain. 

Daphne and Apollo—the flight, the surrender, for 
ever balancing one against another, with the dip to 
the latter. 


196 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


And here again was another reason and excuse— 
if one were needed, and this is in no sort of way an 
apologia. Throughout the last few years she had 
fed upon classics. It was with them that Father 
O’Sullivan sated his passion for beauty, keeping his 
own immediate life clean. There was no hint of 
anything wrong or unclean in all that he and Henri¬ 
etta had read together: where every description of 
lovers and the way of love seemed part of the youth 
of the world, a blending of nature and the most ex¬ 
quisite art. 

It was a different matter altogether when the 
Rorkes’ red-haired cook whispered in the priest’s 
ear that tale which she dragged into her confession, 
the outcome of an overwhelming desire to tell, to 
stir up a sensation, thinly disguised as a searching 
of conscience, a question as to whether she had or 
had not been right in the step which she herself had 
taken in the matter. 

“Was I right to tell, Father?”—telling afresh— 
a needless repetition—with the question. 

The fact is that morals in literature and morals 
in real life must be kept completely apart. 

The mountain height, the moon, the clarity of the 
atmosphere, the stillness of the night—so far re¬ 
moved from stuffy rooms, drawn curtains, the 
whole furtive air of ordinary sexual intercourse, 
however hallowed—those two young things so 
beautiful and so desperately in love; the one—and 
even O’Sullivan realised this—so tragically doomed 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


197 


by her very virtues—faith and trust, unchanging 
love—here, indeed, was the very essence of Greek 
drama; and yet because it was real life, not drama, 
to be counted as nothing more than sin, worthy of 
the wages of sin. 

As a tale that was told, a picture of the Golden 
Age, it would have been wonderful—wonderful! 
As an achieved, present-day fact, however, it was 
something that shook the priest’s rigid middle-class 
Irish morality to its very foundations. 

There was pity, incredulity, rage against Shaen 
in his heart—why, she was nothing more than a 
child!—but over and above all this was the sense 
of something shamed and defaced, something which 
could never again leave him altogether free in his 
judgments of Henrietta Rorke; fixing her as some¬ 
one to be watched—or say “watched over” : it sounds 
kinder, and one must be kind—forcing him into the 
estimate of her unchanging calm, as something 
almost brazen. 

The whole thing got about somehow or other, 
was in the very air, so that it was impossible for 
Henrietta to remain untouched by it: showing itself 
in the way in which Father O’Sullivan shook his 
head over her, was, if not exactly more familiar, 
condescendingly pitying; in the Reverend Fielden’s 
abrupt: “You mustn’t think that I’d ever turn 
against you,” broken by the small dry cough of 
sheer nervousness. “H’m—h’m—poisonous tongues 
—evil speakers, slanderers. All the same . . 


198 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


he crackled his long fingers, turned away his head, 
his whole ungainly body jerking in a way it had in 
moments of emotion:— 

“Of course I know it’s out of the question—would 
have been—h’m—h’m—but if you could bring your¬ 
self to marry me it would make me the proudest 
man in the world.” All this was very well, finely 
done, but the end killed it: “It goes without say¬ 
ing—all that—never let it make any difference to 
me—even if I believed it, as I don’t—before God, 
I don’t believe it, couldn’t believe it—a pack of 
damned lies!” 

“What?” Henrietta’s grave eyes were upon him, 
her face as white as paper. “Believe what?” 

As he did not reply she pressed him to it: “What 
is it that you don't believe?” 

He hemmed and hawed, twisting himself from 
side to side. The fact was that he would not let 
himself believe: face it out. With Father O’Sulli¬ 
van it was different; he didn’t like it, but he was 
ready for it, ready for anything in the way of 
human frailty; though each in his own way was 
filled with shame, and it was that which insulted 
her. 

“What do they say—what is it that you don’t 
believe ? v 

“How could I tell you—low-minded brutes! 
They ought to be horse-whipped.” 

“What is it? You’ve got to tell me now.” She 
was stronger than he was, and there was no getting 
out of it. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


199 

“That you were up in the mountains all night 
with Lord Shaen.” 

“Well, I was—it’s true I was.” 

He had known it the whole time, for after all 
he was no fool, and pure invention would have 
taken some entirely different form. All the same, 
he had not known that he knew, and it was dread¬ 
ful how it took him aback. 

Quite suddenly he veered off upon a new tack: 
an assumption of the whole thing as a mere child¬ 
ish escapade, blustering to convince himself. “Well, 
all I can say is you ought to be ashamed of yourself! 
Tomboy tricks like that! Out on the mountains 
all night! Tut-tut! You want a nurse, Henrietta, 
that’s what you want; you might have caught your 
death of cold: playing at gipsying—a great girl like 
you! Criminal folly, nothing more nor less! And 
everyone worried out of their wits about you. 
Really you ought to have more sense; remember 
that you’re no longer a child!” 

“I’m not a child,” said Henrietta, a little paler 
than usual; with something in her quiet, steady 
glance which made his heart feel like a stone dropped 
plump into an icy well. 

All this seemed enough for any young creature 
to master; and yet there was more to it than that, 
cutting deeper, leaving her, as it were, aghast: at 
the same time stiffening her neck, straightening her 
back, holding her even more apart from her fellows, 
and this was her first realisation of the enmity of 
the world. 


200 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


It seemed that people could accept favours from 
you; seem to like you, really like you, and at the 
same time take a malignant pleasure in injuring 
you; be cruel to you, not because they hated you, 
but merely because, in some queer way, it pleased 
them to see you suffer, making them feel of more 
importance to themselves. 

She had taken no real pains to hide anything, 
though her whole instinct was to keep her secret 
sacred between herself and Shaen. If she had been 
of a coarser fibre she would have been far safer: 
just a word to the red-haired cook, who had been 
at Greylands as long as she had, and led the house¬ 
hold: “Be a dear, Cooky, don’t let on—” and 
they would have felt part of it all, done anything 
for her; in the same way as the little old postman 
with his “quare feet” and warped legs, who would 
walk miles out of his way, keep everyone else wait¬ 
ing, to post or deliver what looked like a love-letter 
for one of Shaen’s sisters, with her careless, “I 
know I can trust you, Denny, good old Denny”; or, 
“Look here, how can I keep him waiting all that 
while for a word of me?” 

But Henrietta was different—fatally different, 
for you can rule the whole world by the merest 
pretence at taking it into your confidence. When 
she arrived home that morning she had moved as 
though in a dream, handing Grizel over to the stable 
boy—her shining flanks all rough with lying upon 
the grass, patched with damp—without a word: not 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


201 


so much as a ‘‘Good morning to you, Jimmy/’ un¬ 
observant of his sly twinkle, his whole air of want¬ 
ing to be in it. 

Cooky herself brought the young mistress’s coffee 
and bread-and-butter. “It’s tired out you must be,” 
she said, and waited in vain for an answer: the 
pathos of the whole thing being that she would have 
accepted anything then—with no deeper suspicion 
than the chance of the two of them making love, 
and overtaken by night upon the mountain—making 
a joke of it. 

It was Henrietta’s silence that set her off think¬ 
ing: she herself said that, later on. 

“There’s something quare in what’s all boxed up 
inside, mark my word for it.” 

Kate, the housemaid, started to run up the stairs 
in front of her mistress. “I’ll be drawin’ yer blind, 
Miss Henrietta; it’s slape you’ll be after needin’,” 
she said, and half turned, all solicitude; then ran 
on, baulked by her young lady’s blank stare. 

Cooky ventured again, touching her arm. “Don’t 
be lookin’ so down-hearted, now, darlin’—it’s a long 
day as there’s no turn in it.” Maybe his lordship 
was leaving Ireland: that was all the thought she 
had to it—then: 

“I’m not down-hearted.” Henrietta was dazed 
and unresponsive. 

“An’ why should you be, for sure?” The 
woman fell back for a moment, then started off 
afresh: “A fine young gentleman if ever there was 


I 


202 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

one; an’ no harm done, I’ll go bail for that. Talkin’ 
and talkin’ as the gintry for ever do be talkin’— 
the sun down an’ the moon up, afore you’d a mo¬ 
ment to stop and think. But if so be that ever—” 
In one flash her mind had changed—if ever Henri¬ 
etta needed her help, that’s what she was going to 
say, and how significant that was! 

She broke off, for her young mistress was half¬ 
way up the stair, dragging her feet wearily as 
though already half asleep. 

Later on they listened outside her door, thinking 
that they might hear her weeping; but there was no 
sound, and when Kate opened a crack and peered 
in, there she lay, sleeping like a child, her cheek on 
her hand. 

When she appeared among them later on in the 
day—gave her orders, did the flowers, all just as 
usual, starting off for her afternoon lesson immedi¬ 
ately after lunch—she was more silent than usual; 
apart from that unchanged, outwardly serene as 
ever. 

“No harm done,” the red-haired cook, every man 
and woman about the place, would have gone bail 
for this, with the smallest tarradiddle served up to 
whet their appetites for excitement and emotion. 

Nothing came, however; she made no confidences. 
If she had seemed to pine they could have forgiven 
her, but she did nothing of the sort. If she had ap¬ 
peared happier or more unhappy they could have 
borne it; it was the sameness which exasperated 
them, strung them up. “She’s a deep ’un, she is,” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


203 


that’s what they said. From this they went on: 
“There’s nothing as I’d be afther putting beyond 
thim there Protestants—” 

“Nothing as they’ll not be afther doin’.” 

Little by little they piled it on: restless for the 
want of some new outlet, interest. 

It was this, and no real intentional malice, which 
led to Cooky’s interview with Mr. Rorke immedi¬ 
ately upon his arrival home; the nods and becks 
and wreathed smiles which ran like wild-fire through 
Clogrhoe. 

There was an interview between the father and 
daughter: all the more terrible because of its re¬ 
serve, that curse of inarticulation which bound the 
two of them. . . . How happy are the people who 
can “talk a thing out,” with the dash of a house¬ 
maid emptying the slops! 

He asked no questions: it was impossible to put 
the thing which he wanted to know, which really 
mattered, into words. His only refuge, a sorry 
one, lay in the appearance of things, an exposition 
on that public opinion which he, himself, had taught 
her to disregard: “Out all night in the mountains 
with a man, you can’t expect people not to talk!” 

A picture of Shaen, so extremely young and 
fresh; ardent and alive, flashed through his mind as 
he spoke, linked up with Henrietta as she sat be¬ 
fore him—her slim white hands on either arm of 
the wooden chair, her feet crossed, her white dress 
—her quiet face and steady eyes. It was impos¬ 
sible—oh, impossible!—to associate what he him- 


204 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


self looked upon as degradation with either one of 
these two. All the same, there it was: “What 
would people say?” 

“He’ll have to be made to marry you”; he could 
not look at her as he said it, and just as well too, for 
he would have done better to strike her. All the 
colour went out of her face; she drew back upon 
herself as one might draw back from the thrust of 
a sword. Shaen was to be “made to marry” her! 
How amazing it was, when that was all they had 
wished for, to have it thrown at her like this— 
pressed upon him. 

“I see no reason for that word ‘make.’ ” Even 
her father, who knew her, counted her so much 
more a complete woman of the world than she was 
—poor child!—found himself taken aback by this : 
the dignity of it. 

All the same, there it was. That terrible phrase, 
“Make an honest woman of her”—‘got into his 
brain. “Make an honest woman of her!” Henri¬ 
etta, his own daughter, only just seventeen and so 
extraordinarily beautiful, so . . . Oh, hang it all, 
there couldn’t have been anything in it; couldn’t— 
a silly child’s escapade, nothing more—completely 
virginal! 

For all that, there were certain standards of be¬ 
haviour: unwritten laws framed to meet them. 

Henrietta stood aside. She would not write to 
Shaen, would not even answer his letters; was sud¬ 
denly and dreadfully shy of him. Likely enough it 
was in this reserve that her strength lay, for when 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


205 


Philip Rorke went over to England and saw the 
young man, he found him in a state of furious, half- 
sullen anxiety. “I’ve written and telegraphed— 
she’s taken no notice. What—I mightn’t exist! 
Marry her ? What the devil do you mean by com¬ 
ing here and telling me I’ve got to marry her?” 
He was so raw and all on edge that it was impos¬ 
sible for him to speak civilly to anyone—above all, 
his elders. And there was his mother, on the top 
of everything else; but just arrived and in a state 
of hysterical excitement, making incessant demands 
upon his interest and sympathy. 

“Got to marry Henrietta!” She was cold as ice 
—if she were not cold, could she have left his let¬ 
ters unanswered, after all that had passed between 
them—shown no sort of pity for him in the alto¬ 
gether damnable time he was having ? All the same, 
cold as she was, it was Henrietta he wanted, the 
antithesis of his mother. 

“Look here, sir—first of all everyone hammers 
into us that we mustn’t marry; that it can’t be al¬ 
lowed; that we're too young and all that tommy- 
rot. . . . Oh yes, I believe you did try to straighten 
things out; but you didn’t try hard enough—that’s 
all . . . And now you come here and tell me that 
we’ve got to get married.” 

“I should have thought that you know why.” 

“There’s no reason on earth, beyond what there’s 
always been”; with a sudden flow of real manli¬ 
ness, Shaen lied; well, too, for an almost alarming 
frankness was at this time far truer to his nature. 


206 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“I want to marry, and I always have wanted to 
marry, the sweetest, straightest, prettiest girl in the 
world, and it beats me what you or anyone else is 
driving at with your ‘don’t’ one day and ‘must’ 
next. I may be a fool, but it’s all beyond me, 
hanged if it isn’t!” 

“That night up in the mountains—you know, 
Shaen—” 

“What the devil do you mean—what the devil are 
you getting at? If you knew that part of the 
world as well as I do you’d know that people are 
eternally getting lost up there—mist an’ all that. 
If foul-minded beasts want to spread a pack of lies 
over the country it’s got nothing to do with me— 
there are always people like that. But for you— 
you, Henrietta’s father—to come here an’ tell me 
that I’ve got to marry your daughter, by God, it’s 
too much! Hal! Hal!—as if she were some 
damned housemaid!” 

He had just been called in from a game of tennis 
on the hard courts, and flung up and down the room 
in his white sweater and flannels, his hands deep in 
his trouser-pockets, his face flushed; a fine picture 
of youthful indignation and arrogance, finer still in 
his defence of the girl he loved. 

“By Gad, I mayn’t be up to much, but I’m 
decenter than to go running about the country with 
a tale like yours. You're an old man, an’ you’ve 
lived with Hal all her life, but I know her better 
than you an’ I know I’m not fit to clean her shoes 
for her, so there!—no, nor any other man either. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


207 

Whatever she did, whatever anyone said, it ’ud be 
the same—nothing could touch her.” 

He turned and confronted Philip Rorke, his bril¬ 
liant eyes very wide open. “Look here, I suppose 
you’ll take my word for it?” he said, daring him 
to doubt him. 

Odd that this should have hurt Henrietta more 
than all else put together. But there it was! 
When her father came back and told her what had 
passed—having taken his drubbing like a man, and 
thankful for it—that denial which had struck him 
as so right and proper, if not altogether convinc¬ 
ing, seemed to Henrietta like a betrayal; filling her 
with a sense of terror, of being absolutely at sea, 
justifying the condemnation of the world—never al¬ 
together spoken, and that was the worst o-f it— 
for if Shaen himself found the thing too altogether 
bad for any acknowledgment, what, indeed, had she 
done? 

Mr. Rorke cabled to Lord Taghmony; then, as 
there was no satisfactory reply, went out and saw 
him, and in two months the whole thing was settled, 
linked up in much the same way as that immortal 
tale of the pig that wouldn’t get over the stile: 
“Fire, fire, burn wood—wood, wood, beat dog . . .” 
Henrietta’s father impoverishing himself for the 
dowry, accepted on condition that Lady Taghmony 
was induced to return to her husband, who found 
life—every sort of life—tasteless without her: she 
herself consenting to return on condition that her 
son returned with her: Shaen making his own con- 


2 o 8 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

dition of marriage with Henrietta: Henrietta her¬ 
self . . . 

Ah, there the sequence ended, for Henrietta made 
no terms whatever, set no special price upon herself, 
was married off as though in a sort of dream, mazed 
by the incongruity of everything. In the whole 
of this there was the one good point that Shaen 
found himself obliged to woo her afresh: while it 
was only at the very end of the short honeymoon 
in Cornwall that she really melted to him; overcame 
that sense of shame which had been driven in upon 
her. 

“If a thing’s dreadful and shameful at one time, 
I can’t see that the space of a few months, any sort 
of ceremony, could alter it. It isn’t as though I 
loved you more. I couldn’t love you more than I 
did then. It all seemed so right, so natural that it 
must be right—I can’t understand.” 

“I didn’t say it wasn’t all right.” 

She was silent, for it seemed impossible to tax 
him with his denial. He had meant to do what was 
right by his denial—she realised this; that in some 
strange fashion it was a man’s way, a man’s code; 
her father’s attitude told her that much. But still, 
why—why . . . 

“You don’t love me as much as you did. You 
don’t love me at all—you’ve stopped loving me!” 
Shaen challenged her, overcome by one of his sud¬ 
den panics. “Hal, look here, look at me.” 

It was in their sitting-room at their hotel, all 
plush and mediocre prints; an atmosphere of 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


209 


frowstiness, because the salt-laden air, blowing in 
from the sea, a stone’s throw away, dimmed its 
varnish and flattened down the plush, so that when¬ 
ever the room was empty the hotel servants slipped 
in and shut the windows to save themselves trouble. 

They were shut now, for the bride and bride¬ 
groom had just come up from tea in the lounge and 
omitted to open them. Shaen was in a mood for 
making love to Henrietta and she was stiffening 
against him. She did not mean to, did not realise 
that she did so; but still it was there, an outcome 
of that feeling of tightening, of holding back, winc¬ 
ing away, as though the things people said had 
chafed her sore, body and soul. 

“You don’t love me.” 

“I do—I do—” She spoke the truth: she did 
loVe him, but in some queer way her love hurt her. 

“If you love me, why are you so different to 
me ?” 

“I can’t help it. I want to be the same, I want 
to—I am really—but everything seems different. I 
used to feel sure.” 

“Sure of what?” 

“That as long as we loved each other—everything 
was right. But now—” She spoke slowly, with 
difficulty. Then, quite suddenly, the words came in 
a short, illuminating rush: “It’s all like writing 
between narrow lines., one has to go carefully—be 
thinking all the time.” 

“How do you mean—us? Us being married?” 

“Yes and—and—oh, life.” 


210 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Our life together, do you mean?” 

“I don’t know—I don’t know what I mean— 
what I feel—what’s right to feel, not—not—sort of 
shameful.” 

“Everything’s right now,’ r said Shaen clumsily, 
with queer masculine self-righteousness, and she 
flushed, the colour flooding up into her face and 
down her neck. 

There was a moment’s awkward pause between 
them. They seemed farther apart than ever. 

Shaen was walking restlessly up and down the 
room. He flung open the window and leant out. 

“It’s beastly stuffy in here . . . Oh, I say, let’s 
get out of this!” 

The wind was blowing in heavy, distinctly sepa¬ 
rated booms, moist and mild. It billowed back the 
curtains and ran round the room, gambolling like 
some immense, soft-limbed puppy. The sea was 
like an echo in the wind—boom—boom—on the 
rocks below them. 

They were in the new, genteel part of the town. 
The old town straggled out in a long semi-circle; 
the end twitched up into a rock-girt promontory, 
running out sharply into the sea, the better part of a 
mile away. There were lights along the water’s 
edge—on the steep hill at the back of the climbing 
town—not altogether steady, slurred by and wink¬ 
ing at the wind: swaying lights on the boats in the 
harbour. Apart from this, the fringes and flecks 
of white foam, the whole of the outside world, was 


211 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

» 

shown in velvety, greenish black, like the darker 
shade of a yew-tree bark. 

“For the Lord’s sake let’s get out of this,” he re¬ 
peated. 

Henrietta fetched a close fur cap and long, rough 
brown cloak from the next room, and they went out 
together. 

The hall porter glanced curiously at Shaen, with¬ 
out hat or overcoat: “It’s raining, sir.” 

“What the devil’s that got to do with you?” 
Shaen, thoughtless and inconsiderate as he might 
be, had, in general a charming manner with his in¬ 
feriors, so that there was nothing that servants 
would not do for him. Even now, looking after 
the young couple, the porter in his own mind blamed 
Henrietta. 

“Nags ’im, like enough. It’s them as are the nag¬ 
gers, them quiet ones; an’ ’im so young an’ open- 
handed when he first corned. Oh, well—when a 
man marries . . . eh, my dear?” He turned to a 
passing housemaid, smiling victoriously. 

The two young people walked quickly, a little 
apart from each other, down the smooth wide road, 
with its sea-wall, its abrupt ending in the narrow, 
cobble-stoned streets of the old town. 

The streets, with their small, bowing-forward 
shops—obsequious as tradesmen—were crowded, for 
it was Saturday night. Women with perambulators 
and baskets, young couples and hawkers, were as 
thick upon the road as the footpath. When a cart 


212 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


appeared in sight, grinding and rattling over the 
stones, they were pushed back into a solid wall upon 
either side. 

To escape this, Shaen and his wife turned into a 
street so narrow that you could touch the wall with 
your hands at either side; with steep steps back 
and up into the blackness of the houses, tall and 
ancient, and narrow cuts between them, one side 
running along the water’s edge showing the white 
fringe of the sea. The rough pavement was greasy 
with damp, there were hardly any lamps, and Shaen 
clutched his wife’s arm to keep her from slipping. 

Once past the fine old church they came out on to 
a flattish sea-front, the strip of sand thick with small 
boats, larger boats and schooners riding at anchor 
in the bay. 

They passed this and, taking a dog’s-leg turn, 
reached the rock-fringed promontory and pushed 
their way up the hill, which rose sharply and dropped 
again to the sea. 

They moved carefully, for here was a smooth 
stretch of grass where the fishermen laid out their 
nets to dry. Now and then they caught the sharp 
dracking sound of clothes hung on the lines, teased 
by the wind; while always, above all and through 
all, came that double boom of sea and wind, deepen¬ 
ing as they climbed, blending to a roar as they stood 
above the immense jagged rocks at the sea side of 
the promontory. 

There were ruins of an ancient chapel up here; 
the War Office had had it pulled down, started to 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


213 

re-build it and then forgotten it, like a child play¬ 
ing with bricks. 

On the very edge of the fall to the sea, stood a 
bench. Shaen and Henrietta moved towards it; 
they were tired with the long climb and thought 
they would be glad to sit down. 

But it seemed that the wind, coming from all 
directions at once, forced them to stand upright; in 
some sort of way play the game—its game. It 
tore open Henrietta’s cloak and enwrapped it scarf¬ 
like round Shaen’s neck, so that they were forced to 
laugh; it was as though it said: “No manner of 
use trying to stand on your dignity with me”— 
ripping the little cap which had seemed so “tight 
set” clear off her head, whisking it away with a 
whoop of triumph. 

The noise was terrific: the air stinging with salt. 
They clung together, laughing louder and louder, as 
though in emulation of the wind and waves. It 
was impossible to sulk or brood up there. A sense 
of immense cleanliness swept through and through 
them, so that they felt like large open rooms, with 
all the accumulation of rubbish-—fears, regrets, and 
questionings—whisked out of the windows: emptied 
of all apart from the echo of their own healthy and 
youthful laughter. 

The lights of the little town, back and below them, 
danced in the eddies of the wind; for those other 
lights in the bay leapt, sank, and leapt again, as 
though at something which they could not reach. 

Boom—boom—boom!—it seemed as though the 


214 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


wind and sea were laughing with them, an immense 
jovial laugh which cleared the lungs of the world, 
rid it of its phlegm. 

Everything was too altogether jovial, hearty for 
passion. The faces of the young couple drew to¬ 
gether, but a wisp of Henrietta’s hair slashed in be¬ 
tween them, whipped across Shaen’s lips. Their 
clothes were blown up so that it seemed as though 
they were all heaped about their shoulders, leaving 
their legs bare. 

“We’ll be stripped if we stay here,” shouted 
Shaen; and clinging together they turned, dipped to 
the landward slope. 

In one moment, sheltered by the sharp crest of 
the hill, peace enfolded them: wrapped them round, 
patted them down like a nurse with her charges. 

They reached the town, threading the narrow 
bye-ways which fringed the sea. Wherever there 
was an open space and a low wall they leant over it, 
with the spray beating up in their faces. Every 
now and then they were almost caught by an extra 
big wave; as it was, the upper part of their cloth¬ 
ing was wet through and through. 

They held hands and ran up the last short lap of 
road to the hotel. It was already dinner-time, and 
they hurried through their dressing, chattering to 
each other through the open door between their re¬ 
spective rooms. When they entered the dining¬ 
room their eyes were still shining. Shaen’s head 
was held high: he had a fine colour in his cheeks; 
Henrietta’s face was flushed. The rest of the guests 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


215 


glanced up at them, with the vacuous expression of 
people who are absorbed in the one event of the 
day; then their faces brightened a little, and they 
wondered that they had never realized how very 
young and altogether remarkable these two were: 
so young that they sighed, feeling themselves hung 
round with cobwebs of years. 


PART III 


CHAPTER XIV 

It was Henrietta’s nineteenth birthday. She and 
her husband were staying in a hotel in Curzon 
Street; they had arrived back from the West Indies 
close upon a month before, and had not really un¬ 
packed because it was supposed that they would only 
remain a few days in London, then go over to Ire¬ 
land. 

They had all crossed together with a mountain of 
luggage, for Lord Taghmony had thrown up his 
appointment. In addition to her own baggage, 
Henrietta had a good many of her mother-in-law’s 
belongings stacked in her room; for immediately 
upon arrival Lady Taghmony had decided that she 
must, absolutely must, run over to Paris for a couple 
of days to get something fit to wear, and asked 
Henrietta to keep an eye upon “just two or three 
things.” “It’s no use storing them for a couple of 
days, and no use keeping on a room, for I shall be 
going up to Scotland directly I get back,” was what 
she said. 

She had whisked her eldest daughter away with 
her. Honora’s husband, who was in the Guards 

and stationed at the Tower, very dull and sorry for 

216 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


217 


himself, came to Henrietta with his grievances: as 
the whole family had got into the habit of doing. 
“She said two days, and she’s been away over three 
weeks, jolly near a month, and there’s no one to do 
anything with; everyone’s out of town and it’s 
damned dull Nora doe's nothing but write for 
money, I don’t see why she should have all 
the fun with me mouldering here, eh what, Hal?” 

“I daresay she’ll be back in a day or two now.” 

“All very well; but it’s gone on too long. Look 
here, Hal, I don’t grudge her a bit of pleasure, but 
when she’s here there’s someone for me to go and 
dine with. Our flat’s really rather jolly when 
Nora’s at home, she always has some cheery soul or 
other to amuse a chap.” He didn’t want Henrietta 
to think he was that sort of silly ass who wanted to 
keep his wife everlastingly to himself. “Now—oh, 
it’s rotten! An’ after all, what does she want to 
stay in Paris all this time for? It’s all tommy rot 
about clothes, they couldn’t take all that time getting 
clothes; and between you and me an’ the wall, I 
don’t think my reverend mother-in-law’s an over 
good companion for Nora. When a woman of that 
age takes to gadding it’s some gad, and no mistake 
about it.” 

“She’s a dear really, and anyhow, you know 
Honora’s devoted to you,” 

“A queer way to show her devotion, leaving me 
alone in this stinking place. L‘ook here, I some¬ 
times wonder—’pon my soul I do—if women ever 
care for anyone but themselves. The Lord knows 



2l8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


there’s nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for Nora; 
and yet, look at the chaps who die, an’ then their 
wives marry again pretty well before they’ve time 
to get cold in their graves. You’re different, of 
course, but you—oh, well, it beats me!” 

“What beats you?” 

“Oh, well—’the queerness of everything,” he 
mumbled, flushing uncomfortably. His own wife 
was adorable with her soft Irish ways; but Henri¬ 
etta was one of the most beautiful and wonderful 
creatures. He didn’t know how to express it, but, 
“sort o’ girl that makes a man feel a worm an’ all 
that sorter thing. Frightfully clever, but never rubs 
it into you, don’t you know, v was the nearest he 
could have got to it; while Shaen . . . Oh, well, 
decent enough fellow, Shaen, awfully popular 
among men and all that; but . . . oh, well, too 
damned fond of fooling about among the petti¬ 
coats. It wasn’t playin’ the game, ’pon his soul it 
wasn’t, thought Captain Horsford, as virtuous as 
all men in love are: even an illicit love carrying its 
own sense of virtue, because everything about it is 
always so different to any other illicit love. 

“Hang it all, there’d be a pretty kick-up if Nora 
came back and found me playin’ about with anyone 
else.” 

“Bobbie, you oughtn’t to say that; as if you 
thought she was—was—oh, well, playing about!” 
How many times Henrietta had heard that phrase 
during the last two years, and how much it covered! 
Generally speaking men were said to “play about,” 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


219 

“shake a loose leg/' while women “kicked up their 
heels.” 

There was never any expressed reason against this, 
providing that people were cheery and open over it, 
did not let themselves go, become dowdy or lacka¬ 
daisical. Henrietta herself stood upon no high 
moral ground, and was too young, too puzzled over 
life, to fix upon any special rules for the game; 
what hurt her, almost personally, as it seemed, was 
the entire lack of loyalty; the belittling of all human 
affections and relationships. 

Bobbie Horsford, a tall, heavily-built young man 
of purely Saxon type, was seated cross-legged upon 
a chair in her bedroom. The door was wide open, 
so it did not greatly matter; while there was some¬ 
thing about young Lady Shaen which—to the prac¬ 
tised eyes of the hotel staff—raised her above all 
suspicion, the possibility of any sort of familiarity. 
And this was fortunate, for Shaen was continually 
sending their relations and mutual friends, even 
his own special chums, up to see his wife in much 
the same way, and for much the same reason, as 
his father, who had been used to saying to his 
A.D.C.’s: “Look here, I count upon you fellows 
to amuse her Excellency.” 

As a matter of fact he had been bustling out in 
a great hurry that afternoon, looking very smart 
and well groomed, when he met his brother-in-law 
upon the hotel steps. 

“Very sorry, got to meet a fellow; can’t wait, late 
as it is,” he had said, then added,, parrot-like: 

* 




220 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

“Run upstairs and see Hal, there’s a good 
chap!” 

Horsford had found Henrietta “upstairs,” as 
usual when she was not out of doors, for she hated 
public rooms, which she declared gave her the same 
sort of feeling as a photographic studio, and read 
and wrote a great deal in her own room. They 
had not troubled to take a private sitting-room, for 
the same reason that they had not properly un¬ 
packed; continually upon the point of going over 
to Ireland as they were, it did not seem worth it. 

Lady Taghmony had asked her son and daughter- 
in-law to join her in Paris. 

“She must be mad,” said Shaen, “when she knows 
that we’re just off for Ireland.” 

He himself was away for several days, “You 
know that chap Merton who was at Eton with me 
—used to come over to Clonross? He’s married 
now and lives near Hereford, and I’ve always sworn 
to go and see him directly I got back to England; 
aw.ful bore though, just when we want to get off.”' 
That’s what he had said, then added: “No good 
dragging you down there, old girl; you’ll be want¬ 
ing to get your kit ready for Ireland.” 

He had been rather more affectionate than usual 
the morning he left; taken her out shopping and 
bought her a fine platinum chain for her neck, with 
what they called “bobbles” at either end of it— 
pearls set like acorns in a tiny cup of diamonds. 

“It’s only people like you can wear simple things 
o' that sort. After all, you beat every other woman 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


221 


I know into a cocked hat for style an’ breedin’ an’ 
all that,” he had said, and meant it too. 

Then, going back to the hotel for lunch and to 
collect his baggage, he had been freshly amused at 
the extreme deference with which the hotel people 
treated his young wife, her own cool, gentle dignity, 
and said one of those unforgivable things to which 
some impish humour, or sheer insensitive stupidity, 
impelled him: 

“Lord, Hal! It sometimes comes over me to 
wonder what they’d all say—those kow-towing fools 
—the people at the drawing-room the other night— 
Horsford an’ his lot, looking on you as a sorter 
saint out o’ heaven; if they knew o’ that night up on 
the Slieve Myshall. . . . Remember that, eh, old 
thing?” 

He nudged her and laughed: then as he realized 
the sudden whitening and stiffening of her face, he 
laughed again, pinching her arm: 

“My dear kid, do you think I’m likely to tell any¬ 
one a thing like that! Rather not! Our little 
secret, eh, between us two, eh?” 

And yet he was not altogether unsubtle. In a 
queer, rather animal way there was a sort of naive 
cunning in this allusion to the past. It helped him 
to remind himself of what he chose to think of as 
“Hal giving herself away”; made it easier to get rid 
of that uncomfortable feeling of being a beast in do¬ 
ing those things which it pleased him to do. 

It also pleased him to pretend to himself to sus¬ 
pect her when he could remember it: “Once a 


222 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


woman’s let herself go” sort of thing; though 
Heaven only knows what desperate straits he would 
have been put to by any real reason for suspicion. 
As it was, he could afford to pretend because he was 
so sure of her, loved her better than he could ever 
love anyone else, counted upon her in everything— 
oh, immensely. 

Even on this occasion of going off to see “the 
chap who lives near Hereford" he had held her in 
his arms, kissed her very tenderly, saying good¬ 
bye to her in her room after lunch. 

“You’re too pale by half, Hal. It’s this beastly 
London. Never mind, we’ll get away to Ireland 
directly I come back,” he had said, with no hint of 
self-reproach for his share in her whitened face and 
lips, that strained look which always more or less 
annoyed him. 

“After all, if she did kick up her heels a bit before 
we were married, that’s my look-out; no use making 
herself miserable about it now it’s all over and 
done with,” he thought; and took himself off, ag¬ 
grieved by the coldness of her good-bye kiss. “If I 
said anything, it was only in joke; why can’t she 
take a joke like any other woman?” 

It was scarcely an hour before his return that 
Henrietta received a complaining letter from her 
mother-in-law. “I don’t think it was very kind of 
you not to let me know that Ronny was coming 
over to Paris. As it was, I only caught the merest 
glimpse of him in the Rue de l’Opera. We were 
driving, and I could not stop the chaffeur in time. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


223 


He was coming away from the direction of our 
hotel and I expect we just missed him. Of course 
he did not leave a card, and one can’t expect him to 
write. Men do so hate to feel tied; but I do think 
you might have sent me a line. I would have stayed 
in all day rather than miss him.” 

Henrietta had not questioned her husband. It 
was like him to take any sort of risk, such as go¬ 
ing to Paris, with every chance of running against 
his mother, if it pleased him to do so. There was 
never any question of prudence. If he wanted any¬ 
thing, he made a bee-line for it; would have it in 
his own way and at his own time. But, again, 
Lady Taghmony, who was very impulsive and con¬ 
tinually thinking of her son, might have fancied she 
caught sight of him among a crowd. 

How well Henrietta knew the whole process! It 
would be: “Oh, look! There is a man so like 
Ronny,” in a shrill, excited voice. Then a little 
later, “I saw a man so like Ronny.” Then: “W'e 
saw a man so like Ronny”—dragging Honora into 
it. And so on until: “It must have been Ronny.” 
“I am sure it was Ronny, so is Honora.” Finally: 
“We saw that naughty son of mine in the Rue de 
l’Opera. Fancy him never letting us know he was 
over in France! I daresay he told his wife to 
write and she forgot; such a dear girl, but so dread¬ 
fully jealous of me!” 

That was Lady Taghmony’s way, and she might 
have been right, but again she might not. 

In any case, Shaen’s description of his Hereford 


224 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


trip was strangely vague and involved. As so often 
before, Henrietta did not dare to question him: 
frightened not of him, but of the tfuth—Henrietta, 
who had always loved the truth, taken it so entirely 
for granted—or perhaps even more than the truth, 
however hard, evasions, lies. 

All that had been ten days earlier, and they were 
still in London. When he first came back Shaen 
had almost overwhelmed his wife with his atten¬ 
tions. He was like a child, ingratiating, continually 
watching her, trying to fitid out how much she 
knew. Then, apparently relieved of anxiety, he 
dropped away again. Anyhow, she was always 
there. He loved her, and she knew that. 

There was never any man with so many engage¬ 
ments : “You must hunt up your own pals, old 
thing. Husbands and wives are not everlastingly 
in each other’s pockets in these days.” 

That was what he said, regardless of the fact 
that Henrietta had been married before she was 
properly “out”; had never had time to make any 
friends; never been to school; was whisked away to 
the West Indies on the very top of her honeymoon. 

He was going to dine with some of his old regi¬ 
mental friends—for he had sent in his papers just 
before they came home—on the evening of that day 
when Bobby Hors ford sat in her room, “getting 
the whole bally lot off his chest,” as he had called it. 

They went down to tea in the lounge, and Bobby 
lingered on talking; it was seldom he found such a 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


225 


listener. By the time he rose to go, with an air 
of manifest unwillingness, it was already past 
six. 

“It is awfully good of you letting me bore you 
all this time, and, by Jove, never looking bored— 
that is the wonder of it. But I am off the string 
to-day, and at a bit of a loose end. Upon my soul, 
there doesn’t seem a single soul one wants to see 
back in town yet. Well, I suppose I must be going. 
I will look in at my club and see if I can find some 
other forsaken ass to have a bit of dinner with, then 
toddle home to bed.” 

“Ronny is dining out to-night—” began Henri¬ 
etta rather shyly. She did not look upon herself as 
an amusing companion, but still, it might be better 
than nothing, “Supposing we were to—” He 
jumped at it, didn’t even give her time to finish her 
sentence. 

“Hal! I say, you are a brick! After the way I 
have prosed on and on, boring you to tears. 
Where shall it be—Jules’? You always get some¬ 
thing decent at Jules’. Cheery crowd, and all that 
sort of thing; and something in the way of a show 
after? What do you say? Would it bore you? 
A theatre is a bit of a nuisance; you have to hurry 
over your dinner for a theatre. What about a 
music-hall—something of that sort? But perhaps 
it would bore you too frightfully? All very well for 
an unintellectual Johnny like me, but I daresay you 
would like something a bit more highbrow? Any¬ 
thing on earth you like, you know. Jolly lucky 


2 26 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


for me to have the chance of getting you to myself, 
and most frightfully good of you to take pity on 
me.” 

He was extraordinarily simple and deferential 
bent upon her pleasure. It touched Henrietta, who 
was not used to being very greatly considered. 
Not very long ago she had come across that thrill- 
ingly cruel saying of Flaubert's, regarding the mis¬ 
tress of whom he was growing wearied: that she 
lived in the back parlour of his heart and only came 
out on Sundays—and it had touched her with a 
personal significance. 

She put on her very best gown to please Hors- 
ford—it was like patting a nice dog—creamy lace, 
with a loose train from the shoulders, and gold 
shoes and stockings. With this she wore a little, 
light tiara of small diamonds, like a spray in her 
fluffy hair. She was rewarded for her trouble by 
his pleasure. 

“My word, you are a brick to have made yourself 
look so pretty—not that you don’t always look that 
—simply top-hole.’’ 

He was very careful to see that she had everything 
she specially liked for dinner; and then began to 
speak about Honora. “She isn’t what you call a 
beauty, you know, but there's something about her 
—don’t you think there is something about her, eh, 
Hal?” Henrietta agreed that there certainly was 
something; with that thought of a kitten which al¬ 
ways came to her upon any mention of Honora’s 


name. 





ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


227 


She liked hearing her companion talk of his wife; 
there was something nice and wholesome about it. 
She liked dining out; she had never been to Jules’ 
before—had, indeed, been to so few places, knew 
so little of the ordinary round of a woman of her 
station—and liked that too. In addition to all 
this, there was a sense of being well dressed, de¬ 
light in the admiring way in which people looked at 
her. She was very simple and so much a child that 
there was real kindness in their glances. 

They went on to a music-hall together, Bobby 
taking as much care of her as though she had been 
a bit of precious Venetian glass. They were rather 
late, and the entertainment was not of a particularly 
high-class type, but they were both young enough 
to enjoy it. There was a comic—vulgar, but not 
offensive, and really funny—man: one of those in¬ 
evitable tramps, who begin to undress and do not 
quite undress, finding themselves entangled in layer 
upon layer of quite ridiculous underclothing. 

Horsford heard his companion laugh, an irre¬ 
pressible chuckle of delight. She was sitting like a 
child, with her hands clasped together on her knees, 
leaning a little forward; her face flushed, her eyes 
bright with amusement. He ha'd never seen her 
before her marriage, and he wondered now what 
had happened to make her look as she generally did 
—so grave, so altogether grown-up; so pale, and, 
somehow or other, “shouted down” by what he 
called “the O’Hara lot”—always excepting his wife. 
“Why, she is nothing but a kid!” he thought, and 


228 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


was overcome by a sudden fierce resentment against 
Shaen. “To leave her alone, mewed up, as he does, 
when she can be like this—a real cheery soul.” 
There was his greatest meed of praise, “a cheery 
soul.” 

“I really don’t know what there is to laugh at,” 
said Henrietta, her voice broken with laughter, “but 
it is funny. And I do like silly things, really silly 
things.” 

The comic tramp was followed by a mediocre 
ballet. Then came a trio of really good gymnasts. 
This strung her up to such a pitch of excitement 
that she had no words left. Horsford, glancing at 
her, wondering if she were bored, realized that she 
was quivering from head to foot; her face raised, 
her lips a little parted, following every movement of 
the woman and her two male companions, who were 
flying from trapeze to trapeze, high above the 
stage; moving with the swift, sure flight of flying 
foxes ’twixt tree and tree: catching, hanging for 
one moment and launching forth again. 

Horsford felt her hand catch his arm, and won¬ 
dered if she was frightened. “It is all right; noth¬ 
ing ever happens,” he said, and patted the hand 
upon his sleeve. But Henrietta had no thought of 
danger. Something in her education had taught 
her to love perfection of form, the beauty of swift, 
sure movement, and something in herself responded 
to it with a feeling as though there were electric 
wires between herself and those swift, white forms 
cutting the air above her. When they moved, she 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


229 


moved—sharp and taut with life, cutting the air 
as they cut it: her heart went in front of her, with 
them and apart from herself, ahead of her—drop¬ 
ping with a sudden rush as they swung from hand 
to hand, from trapeze to trapeze, in a looped chain 
to the stage. 

The lights went up in the auditorium: there was a 
mingled burst of music and applause as they stood 
there bowing, the woman dropping her companions’ 
hands for one moment to brush her handkerchief 
across her lips. They were all three panting, so 
that Henrietta’s own chest seemed to be torn. She 
could see the muscles in their arms and legs sink 
slowly back to the normal as they answered shout 
after shout with their little fixed smile and short, 
jerky bow. It seemed as though they were crea¬ 
tures of the air caught down from their own ele¬ 
ment; as though they could not “work” properly 
there, on those hard, deal boards; as though some¬ 
thing in the very contact of earth drew all virtue 
out of them. 

There had been one moment when the woman had 
seemed to fall from the topmost trapeze; the man 
nearest below had made a feint of trying to catch 
her, swinging forward and just missing her, so that 
they passed in the air. The other man was far 
away. It seemed impossible that he should reach 
her, but he did; catching her by her heels, carrying 
her forward with him, so that the two, with a sweep¬ 
ing parabola, caught at the same trapeze, and hung 
perched upon it, bowing, smiling—the light, con- 


230 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


fident smile of the youth of the world; so different 
to that fixed, wooden demeanour, that slight dumpi¬ 
ness which seemed to overtake them with their de¬ 
scent to earth. 

Hors ford had taken one of the small boxes, and at 
that moment of intense strain, when even the most 
hardened theatre-goers caught their breath and 
ceased their trickle of talk, Henrietta had risen to 
her feet. She was still standing when the light 
went up. Her heart was back in her own body; 
her glance rested for one moment upon the per¬ 
formers, brooding and full of pity, then turned 
away because it seemed a shame to look at them so 
fallen, so changed—their feet in their soft, flat shoes, 
odd and stumpy like a kestrel’s claws curved upon 
irresponsive earth—and swept the opposite boxes, 
into one of which a couple had entered just at that 
very moment the lights went up. 

It was Hors ford who saw them first. “By Gad, 
that fellow ShaenP’ He repeated the phrase to 
himself, embellished with the adjective of the East 
End—sick with apprehension for Henrietta. “And 
a woman like that—all over her too!’’ he thought; 
for Shaen was so low in his chair that he was al¬ 
most lying—the family had a phrase for this, 
“Ronny sitting back on his tail”—while their shoul¬ 
ders touched. Horsford felt sure that his arm was 
round the back of his companion’s waist in the 
shadow of the curtain. 

How much would Henrietta notice? Had she 
seen them? Hoping to God that she had missed 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


231 

that special box, he plunged in to divert her 
attention. 

“I say, what about coffee, or something of that 
sort? Or perhaps you have had enough of it? 
Nothing much coming on now.” 

Even before he had finished speaking he realized 
that he was too late. The recognition was simul¬ 
taneous, immediate. With a queer, sulky air, 
Shaen drew himself a little more upright, apart from 
his companion. Henrietta had her back to Hors- 
ford, but he could see from the curve of her cheek, 
the motion of her head, that she bowed and smiled; 
upon which Shaen rose more upright and jerked a 
bow, with the half-shamed, half-proud grin of a 
schoolboy caught out in some delinquency. 

The woman at his side, glancing up, spoke to him, 
and Horsford saw that lie answered without look¬ 
ing at her. 

“Yes, I think, if you don’t mind, we will go now. 
We have seen the best of it.” Henrietta had turned, 
and was touching his arm. 

The whole thing had happened in a moment, there 
was hardly a pause between his question and her 
answer. Her face was paler, as her companion 
helped her into her cloak she moved a little more 
slowly—heavily, as though conscious of a sudden 
sense of fatigue, but that was all. 

She spoke very little as they drove home to her 
hotel. Horsford was accustomed to this; but with 
an odd sense of being puzzled, somehow or other 
out of his depth, he realised that her behaviour had 


232 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


slipped back to the old Hal he had always known, 
meeting her for the first time just before she and 
her husband left for the West Indies—gentle and 
kind, but rather silent: the sort of woman to whom 
you found yourself telling all sorts of things that 
you would not think of telling to anyone else. 
Beautiful and wonderful—oh, of course, all that—• 
and yet how pathetically different to the girl who, 
less than an hour before, had laughed so heartily 
over the vagaries of the not-very-comic man. 

She thanked him prettily when he parted from her 
in the vestibule of her hotel. 

“I have enjoyed it so much. It has been so gay,” 
she said, smiling; and yet with something dimmed 
in her glance as though a curtain had been rung 
down between herself and the girlish gaiety of an 
hour earlier; as though she, like the gymnasts, had 
dropped to her feet. 

Bobby Hors ford was no sort of a hand at phrase¬ 
making, and yet, turning down into Piccadilly and 
through Shepherd’s Market—with the idea of walk¬ 
ing it off, footing it the whole way to the Tower— 
an idea came to him: “By Gad, it was like one 
open day in a close season!” 



CHAPTER XV 


It was after one o’clock when Shaen came in and 
began tip-toeing about his dressing-room, as though 
in hopes that his wife was asleep. 

Henrietta could guess the reason that he gave to 
himself, or others, for his late return—“Might as 
well be hung for a sheep as a lamb” sort of thing. 
She could almost hear him say it, with a laugh— 
as indeed, he had done—and it was dreadful to 
know any human being as well as this—most dread¬ 
ful of all if you loved him. 

She turned on the light and called to him. 

“Hello! Still awake?” He pushed open the di¬ 
viding door and came into her room in his shirt 
and trousers. 

“Pretty well time that little girls were asleep, isn’t 
it?” he added, moving over to her dressing-table. 
Whistling softly, he began to examine his own face 
in her mirror with an air of great nonchalance. 
“This confounded east wind cuts one’s skin like the 
deuce, coming out of a hot room, and all that. 
Have you got any of your cream stuff here?” 

“In a little white pot, to the left there, by my 
hair-brushes.” 

Henrietta was lying on one side, raised upon her 

233 


234 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


elbow. Shaen could see the reflection of her face 
in the mirror, but not its expression, shaded as it 
was by her loose hair. 

She did not speak, and, as usual, he grew uneasy 
under her silence. 

“Had a good time, eh? I saw you with Bobby.” 

“Yes.” She was wondering what to say. Liv¬ 
ing with such an intensely reserved man as her 
father, she had grown to control her feelings so that 
it was almost beyond her power to express them. 
For Rorke had a horror of anything in the way of 
a scene, a horror which was not the outcome of 
coldness, though that was what it seemed; rather a 
deep-seated sensitiveness which made him feel per¬ 
sonally shamed by any display of emotion; as 
though some lunatic had torn off his clothes in a 
public place. As to rows—“The sort of person 
who makes rows . . with the faint lift of the 
lip and nostril: there was nothing worse that Philip 
Rorke could say of anyone. 

Never once throughout their two years of married 
life had there been any word of reproach, any sort 
of bringing to book by Henrietta. If Shaen de¬ 
fended himself, as he did by his very bravado, it was 
not against her accusations. And yet, before the 
end of the first six months of married life, he had 
launched out into a series of extravagant flirtations 
and adorations. He was like a monkey in a wood¬ 
land of flowering, creeper-clad trees, flinging him¬ 
self rapturously from one to another. There was 
no question of being unobserved, for observation 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


235 

was what he courted: wearing each one of his 
fancies by turn, like a feather in his cap. 

Apart from the fact that he neglected his wife in 
these pursuits, captures, retreats—flingings away, 
rather—they were at first too flamboyant to be taken 
very seriously; on the whole, more discriminating, 
because less coarse and more fastidious, than those 
of his father; for though the two of them ran among 
the beauties of the island like Samson’s foxes among 
the corn of the Philistines, Shaen had stuck, on the 
whole, to his own class. 

The place was small and there was a blaze of 
talk; it could not well be otherwise. But while peo¬ 
ple looked askance at Lord Taghmony, tightening 
their lips, shrugging their shoulders, giving him up, 
they were amused by Shaen; for here his candour 
and recklessness, the very extravagance of his 
adorations, his good looks, his charm and, above all, 
his youth—his wonderful youth—all helped him, as 
the very same qualities had once helped his father; 
so that they watched his progress like that of a 
comet—with interest, amazement, a sort of delight; 
while any young woman of his own set, with any 
pretence of charm, would have felt herself a failure 
had she not held his fancy for one afternoon at 
least. He kissed as the bee sips. “Is Lord Shaen” 
—or, even more tolerantly, “that dreadful boy”— 
“ever alone with a woman for ten minutes without 
kissing her?” They asked each other that and 
laughed: the elder men with jealousy and longing, 
and yet with a sort of tenderness. 


236 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Towards the end, however, the aspect clouded. 
There were things that he did not do openly, give 
them a chance to laugh at. A sort of furtiveness 
crept into his expression. He had been seen where 
he did not want to be seen; he no longer “showed 
off”—the feather was out of his cap, hidden beneath 
his cloak. There were times when he—it is an 
ugly word, but there is no other for it—“slunk” 
about his own special business. 

How far things went nobody knew. He no 
longer made love openly, kept to his own set, or— 
to put it baldly—shade. But whatever had hap¬ 
pened—and likely enough it was no very special 
interlude but a sort of continuous sliding in the 
wrong direction—he was very glad to leave the 
place; picked up the first chance of a board-ship 
flirtation with the glad alacrity of a man who 
changes a shirt overlong in wear. 

The dark cloud lifted the very day they sailed; or 
so it seemed to Henrietta, full of new hope—that 
eternal mirage of a fresh start. The moods and 
tempers which had made him intolerable for the 
last few months were at an end. Flirtations were 
nothing. It would have been impossible to live with 
the O’Haras and keep any sort of faith in the entire 
constancy of one man to one woman, and there was 
something pathetic in the way in which Henrietta 
had come to accept this, her relief over the fact that 
the thing was once more open and above-board; for 
with anyone who talked so much as Shaen there is 
nothing more ominous than a sudden brooding re- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


237 


serve, a fear of any sort of questioning, flaming out 
in aggression and attempts at forced quarrels. And 
then, on the top of all this, that “tread on the tail 
of my coat” attitude of your typical Irishman, al¬ 
ways most self-righteous when he knows himself to 
be in the wrong. 

On this special night in their London hotel he 
leant forward to his wife’s mirror, smearing the 
cream on his face. 

“It’s the hot sun and wind and then all this beastly 
grit on the top of it; plays the deuce with my skin; 
hurts like the very blazes when I shave.” 

His head was a little bent, his brilliant eyes fur¬ 
tive, like a wild ingratiating animal. He moved his 
head from one side to the other, as though to get 
the light on the glass; watching his wife, wishing 
that she would look up, speak. “What the devil is 
she thinking of?” he thought angrily; then, unable 
to bear the silence, he launched out upon an attack 
of his own—swinging round, staring hard—daring 
her to condemn him. 

“If you have nothin' to say, what did you call me 
in here for, eh? I’m damned tired; I want to finish 
undressing an get to bed. If you’ve got anything 
to say I suppose it can wait till the mornin’, eh?” 
His voice rose sharply upon the last word. 

“I have got something to say.” 

“Why can’t you say it out then, an’ have done 
with it?” 

He moved to the foot of the bed and stood there, 
staring at her, his face flushed with something apart 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


238 

from fresh air—for he had had supper after the 
performance, and more than enough to drink— 
thinking all the while, and angrily enough, that Hal 
“drove” him into things. 

“Come to that, Fve got something to say to you, 
too.” He pushed forward the complaint which had 
come into his head for the first time th^t moment. 

“Look here, I don’t care to have you knockin’ 
about with that chap Horsford while my sister’s 
away. I don’t like it, do you hear? If you want 
to go to a show why don’t you tell me, and not go 
dashin’ off with another man. Honora wouldn’t 
like it, an’ I don’t like it either, hanged if I do! He 
was sneaking in when I went out this afternoon. 
Came up here, I s’pose—sitting in your pocket all 
the evening. I don’t choose to have my wife talked - 
about, an’ I won’t have it. O’you hear? I won’t 
have it.” 

He spoke loudly, working himself up like a 
naughty child. Half-way through his speech he had 
realised that Henrietta’s eyes were upon him, and 
this made him uncomfortable, for he could not 
bear to feel that she was judging him; would have 
given anything to have put her out of temper, in 
the wrong. 

“If you want to carry on with anyone, you might 
at least have the good taste to choose someone apart 
from my own brother-in-law.” 

“Ronny, why do you tell me lies?” She spoke 
very quietly, and he realized with a sudden sense 
of ridiculous futility that she had scarcely heard 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


239 


what he had said, was not to be drawn by any of 
this talk of Horsford. Once more he tried to fix 
her, but it was no use, his gaze shifted. 

“Tell you lies? What the devil do you mean?” 

“To-night—” 

“That’s good! By God, that’s good! What 
about you, eh?” He tried to bluster, shouting, 
heading her off. “What about you an’ that ass 
Horsford? What about you two sneaking off to¬ 
gether?” 

“There was no sneaking about that, and you know 
it.” Henrietta’s voice was cold: quiet as she was, 
she could not, would not, endure injustice, even 
from Shaen. “I was alone and he asked me to dine 
and go to a show with him. As for receiving him 
in my room, you yourself met him on the steps and 
told him to come up here, you know you did.” 

“Oh, I did, did I? Who told you that?” 

“Bobby.” 

“Oh, and so you take his word against mine?” 

She made no sort of answer to this, and it seemed 
as though he had triumphed in this matter of Hors¬ 
ford, drawing her on to speak of him; almost 
excusing herself. Yet he was not sure. These 
silences of hers bogged him. He sheered off again. 

“Well, I’ve had my say, and now for yours” 
After all, he would have it out, hanged if he 
wouldn’t. 

“You told me you were dining with some of your 
old fellow-officers, going on to the theatre with 
them; that you had a box together.” 


240 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

“Well, and how d’you know I didn’t dine with 
them ?”> 

“I don’t think you did.” 

“Well, if I didn’t, it’s no business of yours. 
Look here, Hal, if that’s all you’ve got to say, let 
me tell you once for all, I’m not goin’ to be cate¬ 
chised, dictated to by ydu, or by anybody else 
either.” 

“Ronny, you mus.t not lie to me. You mustn’t.” 
She made the appeal desperately. “I don’t ask you 
questions about what you have been doing. I may 
not seem to mind, though I do mind—frightfully. 
It is like being skinned alive to hear people talk 
about you, as they do talk about you.” 

“Oh, that! They will talk anyhow, fast enough.” 

“But don’t you see? Don’t you see how it hurts 
me?” 

Her lips tightened with pain. It did hurt her 
horribly, had hurt her all this while. Somehow or 
other it was like being pushed away with old winter 
clothes no longer needed; all her niceness, fineness, 
crumpled and soiled; like being jammed into a 
drawer anyhow—trapped—giving her a strange 
frowsty feeling as of something degraded and use¬ 
less; sapping her self-confidence, always so slight. 

It was not so much what she had seen on this 
particular night, or that affair in Paris, which had 
driven her to speak; rather the fact that the pain, 
cumulative as it was, had reached a point past all 
bearing. 

“It can’t go on; I can’t bear it any longer.” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


241 


“You seem to have borne it—whatever you im¬ 
agine you have to bear—pretty well so far, to look 
at you.” 

Shaen spoke insolently, but for all that he was 
uneasy. Hang it all, he didn’t want to be a beast 
to Hal, but she drove him to it. Queer how he 
cherished that idea. A perverted sense of shame 
overruled him, as it does all intensely vain people, 
and it is this which makes them so hopeless. If 
they are ashamed, they are ashamed of the wrong 
things. Men more than women, for a woman’s 
vanity is for the most part connected with personal 
appearance. Shaen’s shame lay now in feeling 
ashamed—mean. What was it his companion of 
that evening had said to him upon parting? “Poor 
Ronny! Looks as if you were in for a wigging. 
A will of her own, that lady—more than you have, 
my dear.” 

“All tommy rot about bearing or not bearing— 
all this giddy martyr business.” 

“All the same, there are things that I will not 
bear.” Henrietta had raised herself upright in bed. 
She was hardening, as all very gentle people will 
harden, quite suddenly, to anyone who tries them 
too much. If only she did not care for him the 
way she did, even then, standing there flushed, hand¬ 
some, sullen, so very much of the spoilt boy—far 
more her child than her husband. But for this mo¬ 
ment the caring stiffened her, giving her something 
more to fight against. 

“When you spoke the truth it was difficult 


242 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


enough, but now . . . Oh, it’s impossible! You 
lied to me when you said you were going to Here¬ 
ford and went to Paris, and I can’t think . . . Look 
here, Ronny”—she spoke almost as if she were the 
guilty one—“I don’t think that you went alone? If 
you did, why should you not have told me, gone 
to see your mother?” 

“How do you know I went to Paris?” 

“I know.” 

“Madame ‘Know-all,’ eh?” Underneath the sneer 
was a sense of profound discomfort which exasper¬ 
ated him. 

“You lied to me when you said you were going 
to spend the evening with your friends. I told 
Bobby that, and what did he think? That I lied 
too? I can’t even defend you, support you; I am 
helpless.” 

“What the devil has it got to do with you how I 
spend my evenings? As for that ass Bobby—” 

“Ronny, Ronny, can’t you see what it means?” 
Her voice broke, her anger and resentment over¬ 
come by a sense of anguish. “It isn’t so much what 
you do, but the other thing. If I can’t believe you, 
don’t know 'when you are telling the truth, it is al¬ 
most hopeless; there is nothing to hold on to. We 
might as well live in different worlds. And it used 
not to be like that. You did all sorts of things 
that hurt me, but you laughed and joked about them; 
you never used to lie. Now you don’t even wait 
for me to question you. You lie—just lie, as 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 243 

if . . . oh, as if it were a sort of game to lie to a 
wife.” 

“Look here—stop that!” Shaen was working 
himself up. The blood surged into his face. “I 
am not goin’ to be called a liar by you or anybody 
else. All this row because I took another woman 
to the theatre. What about you, eh? What about 
you?” 

His voice rose to that shrill, excited note which 
broke the Irish softness whenever he was angry or 
on the defensive. “Anyhow, I don’t choose my 
own sister-in-law to play about with.” 

“You choose the most notorious woman in the 
whole of London.” Henrietta’s tone was icy. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Ronny, do you really imagine that I have never 
heard of her? That I have not seen her photo¬ 
graphs in all the papers? That I should not have 
recognised her even if I hadn’t heard the people in 
the next box speaking of her?” 

“Well, what about her? Out with it!” 

He moved over to the side of his wife’s bed and 
flung out one hand with a dramatic gesture, palm 
uppermost; quite suddenly he was past caring for 
anything. His nurses while he was still in petti¬ 
coats knew this stage; his teachers, his tutors. 
“Goes clean off his head; no doing anything with 
him once he lets himself go.” 1 That was what they 
said—what all this working up led to. And yet it 
was not altogether a letting of himself go; more, it 


244 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


was the deliberate making for a point where he 
didn’t care a damn for anything or anybody, reach¬ 
ing it with a sense of triumph, the wild security of 
one who has scaled a height. 

It didn’t matter how Henrietta looked at him, 
thought of him, now, how he hurt her. All his 
love, real enough in its way, was wiped out of him; 
he was unhampered. If she chose to get in his path, 
she must expect to be hurt. What business had 
she interfering with him, dictating to him upon the 
course he chose tb take with his pleasures ? Cham¬ 
pagne, and then whisky, and on the top of that a 
sort of blind rage against this slim, cold woman with 
those condemning eyes, filled his head. He put one 
finger in the top of his collar and dragged at it. 
He couldn’t see her very plainly, his sight seemed 
blurred, but he knew what she looked like, a jolly 
sight too well. 

“You abuse me and then you start off and abuse 
my friends. I won’t have it, do you hear ? I won’t 
have it! You can keep your tongue off Miss Cristal. 
She is as good a woman as you are, anyway—come 
to that, a damned sight better!” 

If Hal had spoken then it might have stopped 
him, but she could not. She was overwhelmed, 
swept down by the noise he made, his attitude, so 
threatening—and it is true he did threaten; he 
wanted to hurt her, would like to have taken her by 
the throat, shaken that fine, keen, quiet life out of 
her. What right had she, or any other woman 
either, to sit there looking so altogether superior? 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


245 


Such airs! His rage surged through him in wave 
upon wave; his face was crimsoning, his eyes glassy. 

“How dare you! How dare you, I say!”' 

As he leant forward it seemed as though his 
mad passion swept through her, like a hot wind, 
leaving her empty of thought, with a queer, dull 
sense of re-living something that had gone before. 
Henrietta found herself struggling against the same 
deadly faintness which had overcome her that far¬ 
away day in the Clonross schoolroom when Teddy 
had thrown a book at her brother, cutting open his 
forehead. By an effort of will she held herself up¬ 
right; her shoulders raised, her whole figure stiff¬ 
ened by the fact that both hands were pressed palm 
downwards upon the mattress. In the same way 
as when one is losing consciousness under chloro¬ 
form, they seemed all of life left to her; if she once 
ceased to feel them she would fall, lose herself, 
beaten under by her husband’s passion. 

When Shaen was altogether normal he was desti¬ 
tute of imagination. In moments of passion—love, 
anger, hate—he saw things clearly, almost poetically, 
in images, as he saw his wife now: so upright, 
slender, and unmovable in her white nightgown: so 
apparently cold, untouched: “Like an icicle—a 
confounded icicle!” he thought. And it was this, 
with her silence, that swept him on to the last insult 

“You! You to talk! I like that! Fay Cristal 
may not be up to your highbrow form; but, by 
Gad, my lady, she has one pull over you. She was 
married when she was sixteen. . . . Oh, well, I sup- 


246 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


pose you were—but all the same, it was jolly dif¬ 
ferent, for she knew nothing. I have her word 
for it. Do you hear that? Nothing. Get what 
that means, eh? Married a blackguard—everyone 
knows that—but innocent, as innocent as a babe un¬ 
born. And now you to talk! You of all people!” 

“What do you mean?” 

More than once there had been allusions, half 
jokes which hurt horribly; hurt because of the way 
in which they were degraded, dragging down their 
love, all that it meant to her. But nothing like this. 

“Well, you . . . Talk of stones and glass 
houses!” He laughed, a harsh, forced laugh. 
“Let me tell you this: there isn’t one man in a hun¬ 
dred that would have married you after what hap¬ 
pened—not if you had gone on your knees to him, 
you and your ramrod of a father.” 

Her gaze was extraordinarily steady and pene¬ 
trating. As he dropped a little from his giddy 
heights it appeared to reach him, pierced him. 

“Pretty thick!”—he shouted it to help himself— 
“from a woman who passes the night with a man 
before she was married to him—so damnably easy, 
too. I daresay if the truth was known, those con¬ 
founded priests you were so thick with—” 

“Stop! Do you hear me ? Stop!” 

“Well, you shouldn’t start abusin’ other women—” 

“That’s enough. You had better leave the room 
now.” 

“I shall do as I jolly well please. Anyhow, you 
know how I feel about it. It strikes me I have been 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


247 

pretty decent, all said and done—decenter than most 
of the fellows I know.” 

His voice dropped sullenly; he was overcome with 
shame. Henrietta drew up her knees with a feel¬ 
ing of stiffness—as though she had been physically 
beaten—and dropped her feet to the floor, mechani¬ 
cally feeling about for her slippers. 

“What the devil are you doing now?” 

As she did not answer he caught at her arm. 
“You'll damned well stay where you are. And 
jolly well remember this: you are my wife, and 
you’ll do—” 

He broke off suddenly, scared, brought back to 
himself by something—God only knows what—in 
her face; his own memories, the feel of her smooth 
bare skin beneath his fingers—and dropped her 
arm. 

“Get back to bed. I’m going.” He spoke 
hoarsely, as though his voice were broken with 
shouting; and something else with it, his blind, un¬ 
reasoning fury spent, gone out of him. 

He hesitated a moment and turned towards the 
door; then altered his course and moved over to the 
mantel-piece, draggingly, as though he, like Henri¬ 
etta, were overcome by an almost unbearable fatigue, 
and stood there staring at the articles upon it—a 
vase, a couple of books and some photographs. 
There was one of himself that he had sent her while 
he was still at Sandhurst, taken in his cadet’s 
uniform. 

He took this up, held it away from him and stared 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


248 

) 

at it as though he were long-sighted; then broke 
into a short laugh. 

“Lord, what kids we were!” 

Replacing it, he turned and looked at Henrietta 
in a dazed sort of way, as though he were only just 
realizing her presence; realizing himself, coming 
back, as it were. 

“Both of us pretty green, eh?” A jolly sight too 
young. Why, you—” 

He broke off and moved towards her. 

“I say”; he spoke awkwardly, hesitating. “Why, 
it’s your birthday! I did remember, only—” He 
broke off again. “I—I—” He put his hand in his 
pocket and brought out a small packet; hesitated 
for a moment with his eyes upon her—like a dog 
that wants to wag his tail and make friends and 
dare not—then put it back again. 

“You shouldn’t start naggin’ a fellow directly he 
comes in.” 

Henrietta could not speak or move. She had 
thrust her feet into her slippers, but she could get 
no further, felt as though life had been drained out 
of her. 

“You had better get back into bed. You’ll catch 
your death of cold sitting there.” Shaen spoke with 
a sort of awkwardness, wondering what it had all 
been about—a “knocked on the head sort o’ feel¬ 
ing,” as he himself would have described it. He 
moved a step nearer. “Why, you’re shivering!” 
And, indeed, she was shivering so that her teeth 
chattered, though not with physical cold. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


249 


As she did not stir or speak he put his arms 
round her—wondering if she would repulse him— 
and lifting her back into bed, covered her up, then 
glanced round with a sense of helplessness. 

“You ought to have a hot-water bottle, or some¬ 
thing hot to drink—somethin’ o’ that sort. Shall 
I ring for them to get you some tea ?” 

She shook her head, and again he hesitated ; put 
out one hand, drew it back, and finally tiptoed from 
the room turning out the light as he left it. 

He had an idea that he would not shut his eyes. 
“I will just lie down for a bit,’ 1 ’ he thought. The 
moment his head touched the pillow, however, he 
was in a deep sleep; awaking soon after five with a 
sense of suffocation, almost as though he had been 
stifled: lying there for a moment struggling to re¬ 
member something that had happened, something 
disagreeable. It came to him with the grey light 
through the open half of the window, the realization 
of the wall at one side of his narrow bed. 

He was sleeping in his dressing-room: they had 
had a row, Henrietta and he. It was odd how when 
he was away from her, engrossed in other things, as 
in Paris, he almost forgot her; but when they were 
anywhere near each other, as now, he was acutely 
conscious of her. More conscious than ever, with 
that feeling of being wrenched in half, of that 
division unaccounted for by time or distance, which 
comes to young married people when they are so 
spiritually separated as to choose to sleep apart for 
the first time; a choice but little less significant than 


250 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

their first singling out of one another as life 
partners. 

The vague sense of something wrong with which 
he had first wakened was flooded in upon by the 
memory of what had occurred, the things he had 
said to his wife, and he was overcome by shame. 

When he threw himself upon his bed he had been 
stunned by his own fury, as heavy as a man after 
some sort of seizure. His mind cleared now, pre- 
ternaturally, as it will at dawn. He had the in¬ 
stincts of a gentleman, and yet when he was angry 
he said and did things of which it was impossible 
to believe that any gentleman could be guilty; was 
amazed at himself until such times as he argued 
them away or forgot them. In general, he was, in 
his own careless way, kind-hearted, would have 
hated to have seen anyone suffer; but then, again, 
there were times when all that he wanted was to hit 
out and hurt. 

The old Nanny at Clonross had said that he was 
possessed of a devil; that was what it must be. 
With a sense of the utmost despair he thought of 
himself as doomed, fated; some day he would kill 
himself, or someone else. It was all beyond him. 
With this thought came that old overwhelming sense 
of panic. The grey dawn was horrible to him, so 
chill and indifferent. He was utterly alone in the 
world. No one cared for him enough to do any¬ 
thing for him; his mother’s love took the form of 
for ever teasing him, but fraying him out like the 
ends of a piece of ribbon. That woman, Fay 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


251 


Cristal, how greedy she was! And not a bit afraid 
of her greed, her passion—well able to keep a hold 
upon herself all the while. With him it was dif¬ 
ferent; once set going he ran away with himself, 
trod down everyone in his path, and was sorry for 
it afterwards—half scared all the while. 

There was no one on earth who was really of any 
use to him apart from Henrietta. That woman of 
the island—with her privet white skin and great dark 
eyes, showing greenish shadows underneath them, 
less pronounced around her nostrils and across her 
crimson upper lip—he had been mad about her. 
What a liar she was, doing it so well, carefully and 
coolly! When he lied it went to his head; he piled 
his fabric so high that it toppled over; and yet up 
to a year ago he had been altogether intolerant of 
liars as something outside the pale. It had not been 
because of Gabrielle’s lying that he had been glad 
to leave the island, see the last of her. He liked a 
spice of the devil in a woman, or so he told himself; 
the real break had been over an ugly trick in eating, 
a sort of sucking-in of the teeth—he could not 
stand that. 

There was so much that he could not stand. He 
liked women with hot, unrestrained passions, but 
in all such women were other crudities which he 
literally could not put up with. Fay had proved 
herself, so far, the best of them, as delicate as a cat 
in her ways. All the same, Fay had no business to 
speak of his wife as she had done. 


252 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Ah, he was sick of everything and everybody— 
most sick of himself, with the stale taste of too 
much liquor in his mouth. 

If Hal turned him down, really turned him down, 
he was done for. He must go and make it up with 
her this minute. Of course she would forgive him; 
she always had done—forgiven and forgotten. 

He jumped out of bed and moved towards the 
dividing door. Seeing that it was shut, and not re¬ 
membering having shut it, he was once again panic- 
stricken, this time lest it should be locked—but no, 
it opened in his hand. 

“Hal, are you awake?” He whispered the words, 
heard her answer “Yes,” and, turning on the light, 
entered the room. 

She was lying on her side, apparently as he 
had left her; the clothes so undisturbed that it 
seemed impossible she should have stirred. Her 
face was paper white, her eyes dark with shadows. 

He tiptoed over to her bed. Why, he could not 
have said, but there was something in the very 
atmosphere of the room which awed him. 

Her hand was lying upon the outside of the 
coverlet. He hesitated a moment, then stooped 
his head, kissed it and tiptoed out of the room, 
turning out the light as he went, and threw himself 
upon his bed, shivering from head to foot. 

When he woke again the sun was streaming into 
the room and everything seemed different. He 
jumped out of bed and went to his bath, was in it 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


253 


almost before his brain had cleared itself from 
sleep. As he plunged about in the cold water a sort 
of memory returned to him. That row with 
Henrietta. . . . Oh, well, she shouldn’t aggravate 
him as she did. He had been a bit nasty, but it 
was all over and done with now. A topping 
morning. Sunday, too. They would go to Tatter- 
sails’ and see what horses they had there. 

He called out to his wife to ask her if she was 
getting up, and she answered that she was almost 
ready, so much as usual that he thought, “Oh, that’s 
all over, anyhow.” 

When he had finished dressing he went in to her 
room and found her tidying over her dressing- 
table. She was wearing a white serge dress with 
bronze shoes and stockings; was as neat and well 
finished and cool-looking as ever—“Good old Hal!’’ 
Shaen remembered having a scene with the woman 
on the island, and how she had gone to pieces on the 
top of it—her hair disordered, her clothes all any¬ 
how, looking as though they were ready to fall off 
her. 

He put his hand lightly upon his wife’s waist and 
kissed her cheek. 

“Come along—I’m famished,” he said; “and look 
here, old thing, I was thinking—” He was on 
the point of telling her about Tattersalls’ when he 
realized something about her—it was impossible to 
say what; she did not draw herself away from him, 
had even smiled; but all the same, there was a 


2 54 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


feeling as though a cold air passed between them, 
separating them, filling him with a sense of vague 
discomfort. 

He caught her arm and pinched it in a hail- 
fellow-well-met sort of way. “Forget it, my dear, 
forget it,” he said, with a sense of handsome 
apology, adding something to the effect that he had 
been a “bit on” the night before. 

She did not go to Tattersalls’ with him, had a 
fancy for the open air and a seat in the Park. 
When he protested that there would be nobody 
there at this time of the year she said that was what 
she liked. And yet it could not be sulks—he was 
sure of this—for she herself suggested that they 
should dun Aunt Gertie for lunch in Onslow 
Square, meeting him there at one-thirty. 

He was quite certain of this, that she was not 
sulking, and yet throughout that day and the two 
and three following it he was not altogether com¬ 
fortable. She was not sulking—she gave herself to 
him willingly enough; but all the same, there was 
something she held back, something that, so far as 
he was concerned, had gone out of her. She was 
perfectly sweet as ever, but in some way she had 
changed. 

He was very careful of her, attentive to her. 
Lady Fair had put a new idea into his head, and he 
chose to cling to it, use it as the reason for that 
difference which disturbed him. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


255 


“My dear, I’m sure”—Aunt Gertie had laid her 
hand upon his arm, flushing, smiling and important 
—“darling Henrietta doesn’t look a bit like herself 
—and I know that look round the eyes, you know. 
I’m never mistaken about that sort of thing, though 
I never had any children myself; lookers-on . . . 
you know. Well, it does seem ridiculous, pathetic, 
I call it—you two things, little more than babies 
yourselves—but there you are! You must take 
very special care of her, Ronny dear, but of course 
I can trust you to do that. I never knew anyone so 
devoted.” 

Shaen was delighted with the idea. He had 
thought a kid might be a nuisance, but now it fitted 
in, explained everything: women are always a bit 
queer when they are like that. By the time they 
left for Ireland, at the beginning of the week, he 
was so sure of the truth of Lady Fair’s prognostica¬ 
tions that he had completely forgotten there had 
ever been anything like a row with Henrietta. And 
yet his first instinct was right: something had gone 
out of her. v 

The mortality of the spirit of love is contained 
in a fraction of the whole feeling. There is so 
much that love can withstand, so much from which 
it can recover itself; but that one vital point—so 
different in different people and under different 
circumstances—is fatally vulnerable, out of reach of 
all recovery. It is no use talking of forgetting and 


256 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


forgiving—that has nothing whatever to do with it; 
there is no question of malice: simply something 
dead, something which will fall down again 
whenever we try to pick it up—lifeless as a doll, a 
doll with the best part of the sawdust run out of it. 


CHAPTER XVI 


It was a wonderful September. A blaze of heat 
hung over the entire country—the vale, the river, the 
shining lakes and mountains; the whole atmosphere, 
indeed, seemed to be steeped in those shades of blue 
most commonly seen in meadow flowers, wild sca¬ 
bious and harebells. There was a hint of speedwell 
in the sky—speedwell too fiercely touched by the 
midsummer sun—against which the mountains 
showed paler still, transparent and ethereal as the 
ghost of a promised land. 

The O’Haras had always despised the lakes. 
But Henrietta loved them; their calm, their air of 
holding something of knowledge and wisdom in 
their depths, that look of a quiet face with folded 
lips. Maybe, though she would never have ac¬ 
knowledged it to herself, there was some quality in 
them responding to her own nature; as the river 
with its noise and turmoil responded to that of the 
O’Haras, whose incessant flood of chatter chafed 
her more than she was ever aware of. 

It seemed that she and Shaen had never had 
more than a week or so to themselves since they 
were married. The menage in the island had been 

full of constant turmoil and excitement, alternations 

257 


258 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


of every sort of emotion. Now, back in her 
father’s house for the first time in two years, a 
sense of peace descended upon her. 

The house itself, as bare and ugly as ever, had 
fallen into a far worse state of preservation; and 
yet, though so much smaller than Clonross, there 
seemed more room to breathe. If it could be said 
that there are spiritual as well as physical lungs, 
Henrietta’s expanded here, her whole being seeming 
more at ease. 

They stayed at Greylands but little over a week. 
For this time Shaen made himself contented; or, 
rather, he contented himself by using it as a sort of 
jumping-off place—riding, or driving his car all 
over the country to pick up his old friends or attend 
race meetings. He was kind to Henrietta, but the 
tenderness of atonement had too soon passed. He 
was so determined in his own mind as to what was 
wrong with her that it gave him a good excuse for 
leaving her behind. And yet, on the whole, his 
pleasures were healthy and harmless enough; for 
Ireland, the Irish air, Irish people seemed so native 
that they brought to him that sort of sanity which he 
lacked elsewhere. 

Henrietta and her father walked and drove 
together. Philip Rorke had become very Irish in 
his half-humorous despair over everything Irish. 
For the rest, his reserve with his daughter still held; 
up to the very end of their visit he questioned her 
not at all. It might have been thought that he was 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


259 


uninterested were it not that she realized the way in 
which he was continually watching her, trying not 
to appear to watch. It was the same with her two 
old tutors, Father O’Sullivan and Mr. Fielden. 
She felt herself standing apart from them; though 
she realized their desire to help and understand, to 
enter into her life, it was impossible for her to make 
any real move towards them, or anyone else, in spite 
of her passionate desire to merge herself, lose her¬ 
self in humanity, wrapped round by the warmth 
of it. 

The curtain which had seemed to descend 
between herself and her girlhood, that evening at 
the music-hall with Bobby Horsford, was still there, 
like a dark gauze, separating her from the rest of 
the world. Difficult, almost painful as she had 
always found it to express herself, to make any 
sort of confidence, it now became almost impossible. 
There were the same servants at Greylands. Cooky, 
with her flaming red hair, watched her with that 
half-sly, half good-natured interest of the Irish 
servant, in some ways like an ingratiating animal. 
Henrietta realized that she would have liked to have 
had it out with her, deluged her with excuses for 
having given her away to her father, welcoming 
any sort of an emotional scene. This, however, was 
the last thing that Henrietta asked for: it seemed 
as though she had been so badly bruised that she 
must hold herself apart from everyone. 

Perhaps, on the whole, she was nearer to Fielden 


260 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


than she was to anyone else. But though he 
came over to Greylands the day of her home¬ 
coming, they were unable to touch each other, until 
one evening when she went to tea at the rectory and 
sat with him for a long time, soaking in the atmos¬ 
phere of that frowsty study where she had been used 
to do her lessons, or sit listening to his bitter 
arguments with Father O’Sullivan. 

He made her get out some of the old classics and 
read over their favourite passages together on the 
pretence of testing her memory of Greek—those 
wonderful old stories of love, of a youth which 
transcends anything possible in these days. She 
had not forgotten; the fact was that she remembered 
too much—had that sort of memory which can prove 
itself a torment. The exquisite harmony of youth 
and love—a passion that however sensual in itself, 
was never altogether degrading, something that, 
likely enough, saved itself by dying young—the 
melody of all lovely things, the beauty of such 
despair as fills all classic literature, wrung her by its 
very apartness from the sordidness of that life 
which, however outwardly brilliant, belonged to the 
Taghmonys and their set. 

When she left, Fielden walked with her to the 
bridge. They had sat late and the early harvest 
moon had risen, was reflected in the river by the 
shadow of the arch, cut into that same half-lemon 
of light which she had seen the night when she had 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


261 

got out of her bed and ridden Grizel for miles; 
driven into the open by that longing for Shaen like 
a fever in her blood. 

She and Fielden leant over the parapet without 
speaking to each other, and for the first time since 
she came back to Ireland the sense of human 
sympathy reached her, soothed her. It had always 
been like that with him—apart from the unfortunate 
day of his proposal—his very silence showing more 
understanding than the words of others; maybe 
because the two of them were foredoomed; he to a 
life which was altogether too long, she to one which 
was, on the other hand, too short for any true 
perspective. 

The air was absolutely still. Though the moon 
was up there was still the lingering after-glow of an 
almost perfect Indian summers day. A haze of 
gnats hung over the river, deeper here, less turbulent 
and rock-strewn than at Greylands, along that 
narrow strip of “Naboth’s vineyard.” 

For a while there was silence between them, 
then Mr. Fielden raised himself with one of those 
odd, ungainly movements which gave the impression 
that he was worked from some central crank: 
could not even straighten his back without cracking 
his large fingers. Henrietta remembered how, as 
a little girl, she had laughed to hear his very ankles 
snapping as he moved along the passage to the door 
of the study where she sat waiting for Fer lessons, 


262 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Pie could not, indeed, bestir himself either mentally 
or physically without giving the impression of 
machinery getting itself slowly, and with difficulty, 
into gear. 

Now, leaning over the bridge, Henrietta waited, 
hung in a sort of dream, while he gathered himself 
together for something which she knew he was 
wanting to say. The very silence of it all soothed 
her; she had an odd sort of feeling as though she 
might be very carefully and gently taken to pieces 
and put together again—and all the better for it. 
Of late she had got into the way of feeling afraid 
of what people were going to say, but there was 
nothing of this here. 

Anyone less likely, from outward appearance, to 
be looked to for comfort than the Rev. Fielden could 
scarcely be imagined; and yet this was the feeling 
that he had always given to Henrietta. There are 
certain motherly women on whose ample bosoms 
even the most grown-up have a sort of desire to lay 
their heads; in the same way there was something in 
this elderly parson’s mind upon which Henrietta 
Shaen’s spirit sought for and found repose. 

'‘You are not happy,” he said, “but that is not 
surprising. Very few people are—happiness has 
been invented. It’s like time—in itself non-existent 
and yet regarded as absolute. Anyone who is, in 
this world, entirely happy or at ease must be 
mentally deficient, incapable of any insight into the 
lives of others.” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


263 


It was strange how this generalization helped her, 
smoothing her in with the rest df the world as it 
seemed to do. 

“All the same,” he went on, in those short broken 
sentences which had always reminded her of a bark, 
“you have had something which very few people 
have had. You have had love. It’s an odd thing, 
but most of us count what we receive as the greater 
part of that gift. Believe me, it’s nothing of the 
sort—in some ways it’s no gift at all. It’s like 
wearing somebody’s hat or being fed with food 
which we are unable to assimilate, for it never 
really feeds us; it is too much or not enough, or 
expressed in a way which we would not have chosen. 
All said and done, all that really matters is the love 
we give. It’s by this that we grow, blossom and 
come to maturity. . . . Queer of me, an old fellow 
like me, to be talking of love. Oh, well . . He 
turned aside, hunching one awkward shoulder so 
that it half hid his face. 

“It may be—a sort of blossoming.” Henrietta’s 
voice was low. She spoke very slowly, as she 
always did when she was trying to express any 
sort of feeling, get out any special idea. “All the 
same, it hurts. It’s like the birth of something— 
oh, something that’s dreadful—not life, more like 
knowledge.” 

“All growth hurts. Life is extraordinarily con¬ 
sistent in its losses and compensations: the more 
you gain the more you lose; it’s a vessel which will 



264 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


hold so much and no more. There are thousands 
of people in the world who never feel anything very 
much—more like plants than human beings. You 
must always remember this, that you have had the 
supreme gift: the gift of feeling, of realizing the 
Christ-like meaning of that misused word ‘pas- 
sion.’ » 

Something in Henrietta’s youth rose up against 
this inhuman use of the past tense. “You speak as 
though it were all over and done with—my happi¬ 
ness, I mean,” she said. 

“Tut! Why do you talk like that?” He was 
impatient with her. “You were not born for happi¬ 
ness; you know that—you of all people!” 

“I want it—oh, but I want it!” She made one of 
her rare gestures of emotion, raising her hands and 
dropping them again on the stone parapet. “There 
are other people—Shaen’s sisters—” 

“My child, you can’t hold it—what they call 
happiness—there’s too much of you. With them 
there is no knowledge of the difference between 
enjoyment and happiness; they ‘enjoy themselves ’— 
heavens, what a phrase that is, expressing the people 
who use it! Your sisters-in-law! Why, you 
know yourself they feel nothing as you feel it. 
They run themselves out in words—the whole 
family runs itself out in words. How, when you 
are so unlike them in every other way, should you 
want to be like them in this? You have had your 
hour—more, ah, my dear, more than so many. We 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 265 

say that 'everything comes to those who wait’: it 
would be truer to say that we go on waiting until 
we forget what we are waiting for.” 

His voice was unutterably sad. It was of him¬ 
self he was thinking and not of the girl at his side, 
leaning forward on his arms, folded upon the para¬ 
pet of the bridge as if, in that old way, he was still 
holding himself together over something or other; 
some feeling which if once let go would break 
through the hard crust of his exterior. 

"You have got to start upon something else 
now.” 

"I am only nineteen.” 

This simple statement fell upon Fielden’s ears 
with an almost unendurable pathos, but he would 
not allow himself to sympathise with her. There 
were certain forms of suffering which could be alle¬ 
viated by treatment, there were others which called 
for amputation. Henrietta had "built her house 
upon the sand”; he could have told her that from the 
very beginning. To his precise mind, Shaen’s type 
was beyond hope—nothing could be done with it; a 
drunkard or a criminal was far more amenable, for 
here there was something definite to work upon. 

"You’ll have to start again. You have your 
intellect, you can use that. You can go back to 
your old studies, enlarging your scope in every 
direction.” 

"You speak as if it were the end of everything. 
After all, I love my husband and he loves me. 


266 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Oh, well—that sort of love, but it isn’t enough 
for a woman of your type.” He was obstinate 
about it. 

“All the same, there’s nothing else.” Henrietta 
spoke beneath her breath, her words so little audible 
that Fielden leant towards her to catch them. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean that I have banked it all upon this one 
thing. I can’t help myself. It’s like this—if I lose 
him there will be nothing left.” 

“Oh, well! If you feel like that—and I had 
hoped it might be different—there’s nothing for 
it—nothing!” 

He drew himself upright, with that odd, brusque 
gesture, snapping his fingers. At the back of his 
mind all this while, impersonal as he believed his 
advice to be, was the hope that she no longer cared 
for Shaen. As she had dropped to him it seemed 
impossible to believe that she could not soar above 
him, cutting the blue of the purely intellectual air. 
Quite honestly he believed that this was the only 
thing for her; and yet at the back of it all was.a far 
more human feeling: that if she could once shake 
herself free from what he honestly regarded as an 
obsession they might recapture some of the delight 
of those old days when Henrietta had proved her¬ 
self the most responsive pupil that the most exacting 
tutor could wish for; meeting him half-way, throw¬ 
ing her whole self into the lessons which he taught 
her; hanging on his words with her grave eyes full 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


267 


upon him; regarding him as the source of all 
knowledge—an intoxicating diet for any man, even 
one as remote from human passion as he honestly 
believed himself to be, despite his jealousy, even in 
those far-off days, of those hours which she spent 
with O’Sullivan—a jealousy that showed itself 
apparent in his unreasonable contempt for all Latin 
authors. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Husband and wife had one ride together before 
they left Greylands. Pale Ale was no more, having 
had his back broken for him out hunting by a 
friend of Denise’s, whose husband was quartered at 
Lichfield. 

What Denise had said to him was: “If you 
want to know what sport’s really like you ought to 
go out to Mayo. It’s something like there, different 
to your dull, slimy old Midlands. Och, they give me 
the creeps, the blackness and dampness of them!” 

The young man had protested that Ireland was 
damp, but she had her answer ready: “It is the 
colour of the damp that matters, not the feel of it. 
Anyhow, you go out to Mayo. I bet you any¬ 
thing you’ll never look at huntin’ anywhere else 
again—just slithering around anyhow. You can 
get lodgings in Clogrhoe, and there’s still a skin or 
so in the stable at Clonross. Likely enough you’ll 
break your neck over the first bank, but that’s your 
lookout.” 

The young man had done her bidding. He had 
been quite sure that he could ride anything, and ride 
it anywhere; knew how a horse ought to be bitted, 

and had insisted upon a curb: then, when Pale Ale 

268 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


269 


topped the first bank—all four feet bunched to¬ 
gether in the way that only an Irish horse knows— 
he had lost his head, and mishandled his mount so 
that it fell, hunched up in the ditch at the further 
side. 

“A good life lost for a rotter,” was all that 
Denise had to say about it, wondering that the 
young man ever dared to show his face again. He 
protested that he thought she would be glad to see 
that he was unhurt, and this was the end, for she 
gave him to understand, as brutally as only a pretty 
woman can, that she never wanted to see him again, 
dead or alive. 

Shaen was righteously indignant. “Why the devil 
doesn’t she stop fooling around with other men now 
that she’s married?” was what he said. 

He now rode a bay, Quicksilver, while Henrietta 
was mounted upon Grizel, a little fat and out of 
condition, for she had scarcely been used since her 
mistress was married. 

Shaen suggested riding over the plains and up 
the Slieve My shall to their old haunt. To his 
amazement, however, Henrietta did not jump at the 
idea. “There’s no understanding women,” he 
thought. “One gets it into one’s head that they 
are so damnable romantic, but, they’re not really— 
hanged if I think they care much for anything or 
anyone, apart from themselves.” 

“Oh, well, just as you like!” He answered her 
sulkily, quite unable to understand why, since that 


270 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


night in the London hotel, she had so obviously 
shrunk from all mention of the past. 

All the same, he gave in to her suggestion that 
they should ride across the bridge, through the 
village and into the plains which lay beybnd it. 
There was always a good gallop to be had there. 
“And we might go on and see the Blakes,” he sug¬ 
gested, his face brightening at the very idea. For 
he was restless, and eager for company and diver¬ 
sion ; every year less contented with the companion¬ 
ship of one person alone, unless the tete-a-tete had 
some spice of danger and excitement—to be alone 
with a woman whom he knew he ought not to be 
alone with, that was a different affair altogether. 

At the end of the bridge—the very place where 
Henrietta had first met Lady Taghmony, where 
Shaen’s dogs, Shaen’s hdrse, Shaen himself had 
given her that feeling of being altogether over¬ 
whelmed—they were stopped by Father O’Sullivan, 
who beamed upon them both. To his mind 
Henrietta’s sin was fully atoned for; and after all, 
Shaen’s position excused everything, for he had all 
the extravagant reverence of the Irish lower class, 
but a few years agof, for what he called “real 
gentry.” He stodd with his hand upon Grizel’s 
neck, looking from one to the other, his small eyes— 
with the great cheeks swelling up beneath them, 
almost extinguishing them—alight with curiosity. 
He was like an old woman, a Mrs. Gamp. 

“I congratulated you upon your marriage,” he 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


271 


said. “But now—two years—tut, tut!—there 
ought to be something more to congratulate you 
upon.” 

Shaen grinned and flushed, glancing at Henrietta; 
for he had an idea that the priest’s words would 
evoke that confession which he was quite sure 
would have to he made sooner or later. But she 
said nothing, and he contented himself with a 
meaning look at her old tutor. “What’s the say¬ 
ing?” he said. “ ‘Shure patience and per-sevirance 
got a wife for his Riverence.’ ” 

“My lord, my lord! we don’t think or speak of 
such things.” The old man threw up his hands in 
mock horror, and Shaen laughed. 

“Oh, well, I wasn’t exactly thinking of wives— 
but there are other things, you know. Just you 
wait a bit, Father.” 

Father O’Sullivan turned from Henrietta and 
looked at him meaningly. “You’ll be afther having 
the old Nanny who brought you all up—there’s 
nothing like a faithful nurse and one that knows the 
ways of the family.” 

Shaen laughed. “To take it off for a lick of 
holy water, eh, Father?” he said, and rode off, with 
a boyish air of triumph. 

“That was one for him,” he called out to 
Henrietta, as, once clear of the bridge, she came up 
alongside of him. “We used to be baptised, 
christened, whatever you call it, with no end of a 
fuss and bother—godfathers and godmothers, and 



272 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


lashin’s of champagne drunk—and then Nanny 
would creep off with us before anyone was awake, 
and see to it that old O’Sullivan gave us what she 
called ‘a thaeste o’ the holy water.’ ” 

“She is a dear,” said Henrietta, and broke off; 
began again, “If ever—” and lapsed into silence. 
She had so often thought of having a child, longed 
for it, with ridiculous recurrent memories of that 
staring doll which she had adored, brought from 
India with her to be dethroned upon the very first 
day she met Shaen. But now, quite suddenly, like 
a blow, came the realization that she did not wish 
for a child that would not be hers alone, or even 
hers and Shaen’s—that it would bring with it other 
qualities, maybe the whole O'Hara temperament; 
that, after all—she had no real reason for this, but 
the thought was absolutely clear-cut—she would not 
have time to bring it up. Odd how, as long as ever 
she could remember, there was this thought of 
there not being a great deal of time for anything. 
It gave her no special sense of hurry. It was not 
like a short day or an overcrowded hour; in fact, 
contradictory as it seemed, the shortness of time 
gave her time; for her thoughts were uncrowded 
with any special planning for the future. 

It was a ten-mile ride to the Blakes’, and tea-time 
when they got there. The whole family were out 
in the garden: crossing the lawn and meeting them 
was like stepping into the sea and finding oneself 
immediately overwhelmed by the waves, sweeping 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


273 


one down and under, taking one's breath. There 
was Mrs. Blake and two unmarried daughters and 
her son’s wife, a couple of grandchildren, and sev¬ 
eral undistinguished young men in flannels who 
were staying in the house; other girls, and the wife 
of the neighbouring clergyman—a darker, quieter 
blot in the ebullition of excited talk and brilliant 
colour. 

They flowed over and around Henrietta; they 
talked to her and about her at the same time; they 
talked of what they had been doing and what they 
were going to do; the last game of tennis, the last 
picnic and race-meeting—a sort of good-natured 
quarrelling, interspersed with a torrent of questions. 

Shaen seemed to be able to manage them; or rather 
flowed in with them, became part of them. With 
Henrietta it was different. Later on, amongst 
themselves, they spoke of her as being “slow in the 
uptake”; perhaps that was it, or more likely the 
habit of thinking what she was saying. For not 
for one moment did they think; turning on their 
talk like a series of taps, but rarely reaching the 
end of a sentence, and regardless of the answer, if 
any, to a question. 

She drank her tea almost in silence; it was the 
only thing to do. To talk at all was like talking 
against an orchestra. There was more laughter 
than she had ever heard before, even with the 
O’Haras; and it might have been this—if there is 
any truth in the laugh-and-grow-fat maxim—which 
led to the exuberant figures of Mrs. Blake and her 


274 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


family: Mrs. Blake herself, more like one of those 
large, old-fashioned dressing-tables draped in muslin 
over some bright-coloured material—a bow-fronted 
dressing-table—than anything else. 

Half-way through tea a newcomer emerged from 
one of the open French windows and moved across 
the lawn towards them. A slender woman in a pale 
pink muslin dress, without a hat, her open pink 
parasol like a flower at the back of her head. 

“Mrs. Arbuthnot,” said Mrs. Blake; “of course 
you know Nina Arbuthnot?” She did not wait for 
an answer. The others were shouting, “Come on, 
Nina!” “Buck up, Nina!” “There’s no cake left; 
the tea’ll be cold.” “What on earth have you been 
doing with yourself ?” “She’s been asleep! Fancy 
going to sleep in the afternoon—wastin’ the best of 
the day, lazy wretch!” “Hello, Nina! Hurry up! 
Here’s Shaen, you remember Shaen and what fun 
we used to have at Clonross?” “Do look at her! 
Getting herself up like that for tennis!” “The 
lunatic! Anyhow, she’s simply got to play.” “Do 
you hear that, Nina? Can’t sleep all day, you know 
—got to do something for your living!” “Only 
look at her—making a procession of one!” “Of 
all the swank!” 

The lady thus addressed, exhorted, criticised, 
hastened her pace no whit. Henrietta had an idea 
that she cherished an exa.ct picture of herself as 
she looked, moving slowly across that wide stretch 
of smooth turf. 

When she did arrive at the tea-table no one intro- 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


275 


duced her, and Henrietta realized that she and Shaen 
had met before and that he was not over-glad to see 
her again. For his face flushed and that rather 
heavy, blank look came into it, the expression of a 
spoilt child confronted with something he does not 
like. She herself vaguely recognized the new¬ 
comer, but whether as a type or an individual she 
could not say. She might have met her in the West 
Indies or in London; she might equally have met her 
in any centre of civilisation—anywhere where there 
was no chance of discomfort or ruffling; for she was 
evidently one of those women who set sail in calm 
weather, in warm seas and beneath blue skies alone— 
sliding away from all that is disagreeable or difficult. 

The instant she appeared everybody began to wait 
upon her. She was supplied with tea and cake. A 
footstool was brought for her feet, a cushion for 
her back. But she took it all for granted, with a 
little nod, an absent shallow-sweet smile, engrossed 
in a half-mocking study of Shaen’s sullen and con¬ 
temptuous face. 

“■Such years and years since we met, Lord Shaen. 
I wonder if you remember it? Those delightful 
days at Clonross.” She sighed, her blue eyes 
flooded with something that might have been tears 
for the tender memory of a youth that was past. 
“And we were such friends too!” 

Shaen did not answer, but he laughed—one of 
his ugliest laughs, short and contemptuous. A hot 
flush, something that could be in no wise mistaken 
for a blush, rose up in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s face. 


276 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

/ 

Henrietta, watching her, realized the perfect skin, 
which lasts so long because it is so thick. Her 
whole face and figure gave the impression of some¬ 
thing hard and unyielding, something harder than 
flesh, with its wonderful pink and white skin cover¬ 
ing it like a kid glove. There were tiny pencilled 
lines under her eyes, one very fine at either side of 
her mouth; otherwise she seemed unchanged from 
the beauty whom she now remembered as having seen 
riding and driving with Shaen when she herself was 
still a little girl, years and years ago, or so it seemed. 

“You men are so hard. ... It is strange how 
we women cherish memories. I suppose we have 
not so many good times in our lives, and so we re¬ 
member them more; but I shall never forget those 
old days.” 

“I’m not likely to forget either.” Shaen was 
lolling back in his chair, staring at her insolently. 
“As for you, you seem to me pretty well the same, 
and it strikes me that you will always take care to 
have a jolly good time of it.” 

“I don't think I’ve had a very good time. I 
don’t think anyone could say that.” Nina Arbuth- 
not’s voice was pathetic. Once again there was that 
hint—just a hint—of tears in her eyes, and Mrs. 
Blake bustled into the conversation. 

“Indeed, she has had a dreadful time. Perhaps 
you haven’t heard, Ronny—” Her voice dropped 
to a sort of whisper, altogether audible to the whole 
party. “Too awful! Her husband—men are so 
inconsiderate!” Somebody else spoke. Henrietta 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


277 


gained the idea, not from any one thing that was 
said, but rather from a rush of innuendoes and hints, 
that Arbuthnot had committed suicide, in, as Mrs. 
Blake said, the most untidy manner. One of the 
young men of the party muttered something in Hen¬ 
rietta’s ear: “Beastly shame! In her own draw¬ 
ing-room, in front of her and all!” There was 
something else about the “mess,” something more 
ludicrous still about the carpet; and she realised that 
poor little Arbuthnot, tubby, good-natured, and un¬ 
important—save as the holder of purse-strings and 
settler of innumerable bills—had been inconsiderate 
enough either to cut his throat or blow his brains 
out over his wife’s new carpet. They even men¬ 
tioned the colour of it—“pale grey, too!” 

The bereaved wife, meanwhile, sat with her plead¬ 
ing eyes full upon Shaen. Every now and then she 
raised one slender, well-kept hand and patted the 
curls at either side of her forehead. 

“Anyhow, the past is over and done with,” said 
Mrs. Blake, putting an end to it all with sweeping 
geniality; and the strain—a strain to all save Mrs. 
Arbuthnot herself, who sat looking the part, feeling 
herself the heroine of the moment—broke. 

They began speaking of the tennis tournament 
which was to take place the next week, arguing and 
arranging—one of those half-quarrelling, half-flirt¬ 
ing verbal battles to which Henrietta was so well 
accustomed. Quite suddenly some one of them re¬ 
membered her presence sufficiently to enquire 
whether she played, but did not wait for an answer; 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


278 

breaking in, with a vehement expostulation upon 
something which the rest of the party seemed to be 
settling among themselves. 

“I say, I won’t play with that Matheson woman— 
that’s flat! She’s hopeless—more like a performing 
elephant than a woman. Hit? I daresay she can 
hit, but what’s the good if the balls go in the wrong 
direction? Oh, well! let Vincent play with her. 
Vincent likes fat women!” 

“Not on the tennis-court, though. I prefer my 
grass-rollers distinct from my players.” 

“If we play tennis on Monday, Tuesday, and 
Wednesday, what about the gymkhana?” They 
were deep in another discussion: the ponies they 
were to ride, the sort of programme which would 
give everyone an equal chance. Mrs. Blake turned 
to Henrietta: “Such a pity you don’t ride,” she 
said vaguely. 

“Why, she rode here!” They seemed to be sur¬ 
prised at that. But, starting to place her for the 
gymkhana, were once again diverted by someone 
else’s insistence upon the discussion of prizes. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot was leaning forward towards 
Shaen, poking at the turf with the tip of her parasol, 
her head drooping, her eyes raised. 

“You are angry with me,” she said. “I don’t 
think that’s very nice of you after all these years. 
That evening, you know—you must acknowledge 
that I was in a terribly difficult position—daren’t 
risk any sort of a scandal. You will realise from 
what they have been saying what my husband was 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


279 


like. You won’t believe it, perhaps—you blame me 
for everything—but really and truly I was terrified 
of him. Often I used to lie awake for hours and 
hours, frightened of going to sleep, frightened of 
what he might do to himself”—she paused, and her 
voice dropped—“or to me. And after all, you were 
such a boy—such a darling boy, I hated to let you 
down, you can never know how I hated it.” 

“ 1 ’m not a boy now,” said Shaen. 

Her voice had been one long murmur, like the 
cooing of a dove. His was sharp and contemptu¬ 
ous, so loud that the others turned and looked at 
him, but only for one moment, reverting again to 
their own discussions—laughing and wrangling. 

“I don’t think you would speak like that if you 
had any idea—the faintest idea—of what I have 
been through.” 

“Look here, I’m not a boy now.” Shaen re¬ 
peated the words with significant emphasis, raising 
himself upright in his chair and leaning forward 
towards her. 

“I know. You’re married, aren’t you?” She 
glanced towards Henrietta. “She’s very pretty. 
She looks so young and, somehow, so placid. I 
don’t suppose she has ever been through any of 
those dreadful crises, nerve-storms, that we women 
who care too much suffer from. Ronny, Ronny 
dear, look here, I want you to forgive me.” 

“There’s nothing to forgive.” 

“I know,” she sighed. “Of course, since then 
you must have realized how I was driven. . . . 


28 o 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Yes, that’s it—driven. My dear, if you knew one 
half of what my life was you would be sorry for 
me.” 

“Well, you’re free now.” 

“Yes, I’m free now,’' she said; and added in a 
lower voice, with downcast eyes, “but too late!’ 

“Too late for what ?” Shaen’s voice had dropped. 
There was something at once amused and excited in 
his look. He was always so extraordinarily trans¬ 
parent, so very much of a boy—not altogether the 
public school boy, but the small preparatory urchin 
who is for ever on the look-out for what he calls 
a “do.” If Henrietta had happened to glance at him 
that moment she would have known that he had 
something in the way of what he called a “lark” in 
his mind. 

“You’re still most frightfully pretty, you know 
that, I suppose. I cannot make out why you should 
say it’s too late for anything. ...” 

His tone had that sort of slighting condescension 
which would have been like a whip to Henrietta; 
but Nina Arbuthnot’s sensibilities were as thick¬ 
ened as her skin. She might be out all day in the 
wind and rain and show no signs of it—pink and 
white as ever: and her soul was like that too. 
Nothing had ever really touched her, while she was 
so greedy for praise that she had become indifferent 
to the form which it took. For throughout those 
three or four years which had passed since she last 
saw Shaen there was no sort of way in which she 
had not coarsened, hardened. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


281 


“It would be nice to have a chat over old times,” 
she said, and then added tentatively, in a rather 
louder tone: “There are peaches, you know, just 
a few of them, very little ones, sheltering under the 
leaves of the walled garden. No chance of finding 
them unless one looks for them oneself.” 

She rose and glanced at him. Dense enough in 
some ways, in the finer and subtler things of life, 
Shaen was quick enough to follow the lead of any 
pretty woman. 

“Anyhow, we might see,” he said. 

They were moving away together, when Nancy 
Blake called after them: “Ronny, Ronny, look 
here! You must play! It’s no good thinking of 
having you for a partner next week unless we have 
some practice together.” The others joined in: 

“Look here, we can’t have you two sneaking off 
together. Nina, Nina!—Shaen!” they called after 
them, giving every sort of reason why they must 
join the general herd; but Nina Arbuthnot shook 
her head smilingly. She was standing out on the 
lawn now, away from the shade of the cedar where 
the others sat. The sun was at the back of her; 
her pink skirt, flounced to the waist, looked like a 
pale-tinted rose against the light; her parasol, 
thrown back over one shoulder, acted as a frame to 
her face. Her hair, which was a trifle yellower 
than it used to be—showing almost brass-like in a 
room, under artificial light, or in the shade of the 
trees—shone like finest spun gold in the light of the 
sun, already low, its beams level with the flower- 


282 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


beds, touching the top of the golden rod, the clumps 
of wine-coloured dahlias, the crimson mass of Vir¬ 
ginian creeper draping the side of the ugly old 
house. 

She waved her hand to the group beneath the 
trees; and laughing, without any attempt to reply, 
turned away at Shaen’s side; the two tall figures 
dogged by their long shadows which stretched for 
one moment almost to Henrietta’s feet; then moved 
on, following their owners and away from her. 

There were three tennis-courts lying beneath a 
sunk fence. The children drifted away, intent on 
their own amusements, laughing, shouting to one 
another; Henrietta could hear them, winding in and 
out of the shrubberies. The young people, after a 
great deal of friendly quarrelling, arranging and re¬ 
arranging of sets, began to play. The clergyman’s 
wife had gone away and she sat alone by Mrs. 
Blake’s side, watching the game. It seemed that 
there must be years between herself and the others— 
with the sunk fence as an emblem of separation— 
and yet likely enough she was the youngest of any 
of them. Mrs. Blake, whose great idea of conversa¬ 
tion consisted in a volley of questions, ferreted out 
her age and was amazed at the answer. 

“You couldn’t have been more than seventeen 
when you married! What a baby! And dear 
Ronny—of course we all of us love and adore 
Ronny, but really it seems as though he never can, 
or will, grow up—a real Peter Pan, don’t you think ? 
But I love young marriages—so charming to see 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


283 


young people happy, so much more romantic.” 

She rambled on and on, or rather round and 
round in a sort of spiral; her fat, contented voice 
with its rounded curves matched her person. It 
was impossible for Henrietta to follow all that she 
said—for trivialities repeated, heaped up one upon 
another, are, after all, more difficult than what Mrs. 
Blake herself would have described as “intellectual 
conversation”—and she could not play tennis in her 
habit and long riding-boots, so that there was noth¬ 
ing for her to do except sit helpless, while the even, 
mellow brogue enwrapped her till she felt as though 
she were entangled by innumerable threads of Ber¬ 
lin wool. 

She even had a sort of mental picture of it in 
the way that such things often came to her. Many, 
many years ago, someone had taught her to make 
balls by winding different coloured wools around 
and about a small cork until it was solid and round, 
elastic and bounceable. She visualised herself as 
the inner core of just such a ball, with Mrs. Blake 
as an immense skein of shaded wool, running out 
and out, showing no visible lessening of size. 
There was something else, too. At a small travel¬ 
ling show which had camped at Foxford—two vans 
and a tent, one elephant and a mangy camel—the 
“star” had been a tall, cadaverous man who pulled 
the end of a narrow strip of coloured paper out of 
his mouth, and went on pulling, until it lay in a heap 
about his feet, mounted to his knees—pink and 
yellow, pale green and pale blue. There you have 


284 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

something of Mrs. Blake and her flow of conversa¬ 
tion. 

Henrietta was still child enough to feel the dif¬ 
ficulty of making any sort of a move; besides, how 
would it be possible to find her husband? It 
seemed awkward and gauche, like the stupid, jealous 
wife of fiction, to ask that someone might be sent 
to look for him: still more hopeless to go herself. 
The sun sank so that it was no longer possible to 
see to play tennis, and the whole party came up the 
steps from the sunken lawn, dropped on the grass 
at their feet, arguing, expostulating. The two chil¬ 
dren reappeared and tumbled over them. Someone 
went to the house in search of claret cup, while Mrs. 
Blake ran on with a stream of warnings against the 
damp grass, the fatal effect of cold drinks upon 
people so over-heated as they were, reminding them 
of the hour and the necessity of dressing for dinner. 
But no one took any notice of what she said, and 
as it seemed more natural for her to go on talking 
than to remain silent it did not greatly matter. 

The shadows under the trees merged into the 
general greyness. The warmer tints in the garden, 
reds and purples, were blotted out; though here and 
there the paler flowers, the evening primrose and 
the white tobacco plant, with its intoxicating per¬ 
fume, broke the general tone, the wash of velvety 
grey. 

The whole party was at length gathering itself 
together, collecting its belongings, when two figures 
emerged from the shrubbery and moved slowly 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


285 

across the tennis-court; all the colour wiped out of 
them so completely that they were scarcely distin¬ 
guishable from the slender clipped yews which 
dotted the higher ground at the far end of the court 
—were like ‘‘trees walking.” 

There was a fire of chaff as Shaen and Nina Ar- 
buthnot joined the rest of the party straggling 
towards the house. Half-way across the lawn they 
met the butler with his tray and a large jug of 
claret cup and glasses, and helped themselves to 
drinks; gathering together in the thickening gloom, 
regardless of Mrs. Blake’s prognostications of a 
spoiled dinner and ruined appetites. 

It seemed to be taken for granted that Shaen and 
his wife were staying to dinner; but to Henrietta’s 
relief her husband supported her in her refusal, and 
they moved round to the stable-yard to fetch their 
horses, surrounded by an expostulating throng, 
which waved and shouted to them as they rode 
away into the autumn mist that swam lake-like 
across the park, with the heavily-foliaged elms 
floating like galleons upon it. 

It was just before they reached Greylands that 
Shaen told his wife that he had asked Mrs. Arbuth- 
not to come on to Clonross. 

“She seems to have nowhere particular to go 
when she leaves the Blakes’—regularly at a loose 
end. Jolly unlucky for a woman like that having 
no one to look after her. Pretty, too, eh, Hal?” 

Henrietta agreed that she was pretty, and Shaen 
laughed rather headily. “Knows it, too!” he said, 


286 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


and added something about there being a little ac¬ 
count still waiting to be settled; then broke off, 
laughing again, putting his horse to a gallop along 
the soft turf at the edge of the drive. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Two days later Henrietta and her husband went 
over to Clonross, where Lord and Lady Taghmony 
were already established—as much established as 
they could be anywhere, for they were possessed by 
that sort of fever of restlessness which comes to 
rather mindless people in middle age. They could 
not endure being left alone, even with one or two 
of their own relations; they must have the constant 
stimulus of strangers who didn’t know them too 
well; to whom they could relate such things as they 
had told their older friends and their relatives again 
and again, wearing them out, so that in time it 
seemed as though they would be overtaken by the 
fate of all people eaten up with egotism, possessed 
of a grievance to which they could find no one of 
their own set left to listen—those old ladies in 
hotel drawing-rooms, those dreaded old men in 
clubs, who, buttonholing the merest stranger, will 
pour out the tale of their most intimate affairs—a 
habit as fatal as dram-drinking. 

On the last morning at Greylands breakfast was 
later than usual. When Henrietta entered the din¬ 
ing-room the long table and crumpled table-cloth 
were bare save for a jar of marmalade, a loaf of 
bread and a few plates, flung down just as they 

had been taken off the tray. The whole room had 

287 


288 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


that desolate look of a place which has been done 
over anyhow—a lick and a promise, and not much 
of that. Indeed, the entire house had depressed her 
since her arrival: coming back to it like this was 
in many ways profoundly saddening. It seemed 
gaunter than ever, and she was conscious of a feel¬ 
ing as though she had somehow or other failed in 
her duty to her father. It was dreadful, to think 
of him after his life in India—the scope of his in¬ 
fluence, the beauty of his surroundings, the order 
and formality of it all, even when they camped 
out—living in the way he did now, at the mercy of 
Irish servants, of whom he appeared to have grown 
so profoundly contemptuous that he had ceased to 
battle with them: giving them up in despair, half 
enjoying the disorder, with the gesture of one who 
says, “I told you so.” 

He was out in the garden now, prodding up 
weeds on the ill-kept lawn with his spud; not keep¬ 
ing to one part of it, but moving to and fro. He 
himself, like the house, had aged a very great deal 
more than the years warranted. At least, it was 
not so much that he had aged as that he seemed to 
have let himself go, along with his immediate sur¬ 
roundings. Henrietta had noticed that instead of 
reading after dinner, as he always had done, he 
dropped asleep^by the peat fire, which was kept con¬ 
tinually burning on the dining-room hearth; for 
he had given up using the library, and submitted 
to spend the whole day in one room—a decree of 
the servants, this—with the table not altogether 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


289 


cleared, and the cloth turned back at one end. 

When his daughter spoke of it all it seemed that 
he did not want to be troubled: “Indeed, it isn’t 
worth bothering about,” was what he said; over¬ 
come by the fatal, half-despairing indolence of that 
country which had stood for the enchanted isle of 
his earlier life. 

Henrietta joined him in the garden and, slipping 
her arm in his, they walked to and fro together 
without speaking. 

The summer had broken only that night, with a 
storm of wind and rain. It was fine now, but the 
air had changed. It was distinctly cooler, with an 
autumnal scent of decay, sweet and sad. The sky, 
in parts more brilliantly blue than it had been, was 
piled with clouds—hard cut, shining white clouds, 
backing the mountains; the mountains themselves, 
less than twenty-four hours ago so fairy-like, solid 
and menacing, were of the darkest indigo blue. 

It was only just as the rough servant-girl, with a 
cap on the back of her head, bawled from the open 
French window to tell them breakfast was on the 
table, that Mr. Rorke broke the silence. 

“You know this is always your home. I don’t 
want to interfere—I can’t interfere.” He gave the 
gesture of the person who brushes something aside, 
and then patted the hand which lay upon his arm : 
“Anyhow, you know, this is always your home. 
You can always come back here. Young people— 
as young as your husband—are often enough wear¬ 
ing to live with. But there you are! Do what you 




290 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

like, my dear; of course, you must always do what 
you like.” 

“He is three years older than I am.” The words 
were out before Henrietta realized what she was 
saying: were, indeed, uttered with a sense of sur¬ 
prise. For she, herself felt much as her father did, 
that to be continually in Shaen's company was like 
spending your time with a high-spirited and ob¬ 
streperous child. 

“Yes, yes, my dear, I know that; but still, age 
does not go entirely by years, and somehow or 
other—of course, I don’t know, it may be the life 
in the West Indies, the heat and all that, though 
you’re used to that—of course I may be wrong—but 
it seems to me that you look tired, just a little tired. 
Anyhow, here we are, the old man and the old 
house.” He turned his head aside in that odd 
nervous way which accompanied any effort to ex¬ 
press his feelings, and added: “It was never very 
gay here, but it seems as though all the sunshine 
had gone out of it now, without you.” 

In all their life together he had never said as 
much, put his affection into so many words. Even 
upon that occasion, years ago, when she was a tiny 
child lying near the point of death at Peshawar, it 
had been his look, the caress he gave, which spoke 
for him. 

She slipped her hand along his arm and laid it 
in his, without a word, for there was something 
in her throat which prevented her from speaking— 
anyhow, there was no need for words. How much 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


291 


had passed between these two, how infinitely much, 
with never a word said! She often looked back 
on it now: those long evenings when they had 
sat either side of the fire, each with a book: glanc¬ 
ing up now and then to exchange a smile or glance: 
those meals passed in a silence which had never 
weighed in the very least upon either of them. 

Henrietta had been so impressed by the fashion in 
which the O’Haras had talked. She remembered 
that too, and it amused her. How young it all 
seemed: the way in which she had imagined that 
because they spoke so much more than she or her 
father, gave expression to every mood, every 
thought and feeling, they must therefore feel a 
great deal more. 

They had finished breakfast when Shaen came 
down, looking very fresh and alert, as he always 
was in the morning. They were leaving at eleven 
and he had not begun to pack. 

“Somebody must put my things together for 
me: perhaps you will see to it, eh, Hal ? And I 
say, could you run the car over to Clonross? I 
promised Flynn to go down to the kennels and look 
at some new puppies he has been braggin’ about. 
Tell them that I will be over some time in the after¬ 
noon. . . . Oh, and by the bye, you might tell them 
about Mrs. Arbuthnot. She will be there some 
time about tea-time, I expect. I absolutely forgot 

to let the mater know—” 

“She won’t mind? . . began Henrietta tenta¬ 
tively. 


29 2 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“It’s no good her starting to mind what I do” ; his 
tone was at once restive and sullen. “If she wants 
me to put in an appearance she knows she has got 
to make things pleasant. And just see what sort 
of a bedroom she gives her. She has got a way of 
filling up the house with her own friends, and I 
suppose all the others have come over with a pack 
yelping at their heels as usual. I never knew such 
a family as mine—impossible for them to move un¬ 
less it’s in coveys. Oh, look here, though!”—he 
was half-way out of the room when he turned 
back—“if you could go round by Castle ford on 
your way—it would make a bit of a drive for you 
—you might see if my gun-case is at the station, 
and call in at Harvey’s for some cartridges.” 

Even then he turned back once again: “Oh, I say, 
Hal, supposin’ you get your father to lend you the 
outside car and I will take the motor, then I can 
go on to the Blakes’ after the kennels, pick up 
Mrs. Arbuthnot and bring her over—only for good¬ 
ness’ sake don't forget to tell the mater; it will come 
better from you!’’ 

That afternoon at the Blakes’ was a sample of the 
life at Clonross, though here the ease was more on 
the surface, less evenly diffused. The younger 
members of the party were happy enough, lived 
in the day and for the day. With them that old 
belief that “nothing is worth worrying about’’ still 
held, but it had slipped from Lady Taghmony along 
with the rest of her kingdom, while the old sunny 
sweetness and irresponsibility had been followed by 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


293 


that period of feverish gaiety, striving after youth. 

This, too, was now past. In these days she was 
peevish and shrank from noise, unhappy if she were 
alone and yet unable to endure the contrasts of 
youth—the bitterness of feeling out of things. It 
seemed impossible for her to allow herself to float 
into the quiet haven of middle age, and she was 
washed to and fro like flotsam ’twixt sea and shore. 

Lord Taghmony appeared and disappeared at in¬ 
tervals. By this time he was flagrant in his faith¬ 
lessness, made no pretence of affection for his wife. 
He had loved her for close upon twenty years, 
with interludes—intimacies with other women, 
which had, in reality, left her untouched; the loss 
of her beauty was, however, fatal. 

“A man marries a woman for her looks, her 
skin, her figure. It’s all bunkum to pretend he 
doesn’t. All your parsons, and people like that— 
they’re just the same as everyone else; the only 
difference is that they’re such damned humbugs. 
When the thing you’re bargained for ceases to exist, 
where’s the sense of pretending that it’s still there? 
Might as well try to live in a house that is falling 
about your head. She has got you children; why 
can’t she make herself happy with you?” 

He had said that once to Shaen, brutally enough, 
for it was always “your children” now, never 
“ours.” He had been fond of them when they 
were little—small flourishes around his greatness. 
In these days, however, they were a constant re¬ 
minder of all that he had lost: gaining by love, by 



294 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


their own attractions, that for which he found him¬ 
self obliged to pay a higher and still higher price— 
pursuer instead of pursued. 

He and his wife did not quarrel in public—they 
were just a shade too well bred for that. But 
there were intervals when each addressed the re¬ 
mainder of the party alone: when each was point¬ 
edly deaf and dumb so far as the other was con¬ 
cerned; moments when the feeling of there having 
been some sort of row echoed like a shot through 
the house. 

On the whole, however, a sort of dreary indiffer¬ 
ence hung over them both, as though they had come 
to the end of feeling. Sometimes it seemed to Hen¬ 
rietta, realizing them intensely as she did—so sensi¬ 
tive to the moods of others—that their fluctuations 
of temper, dislike, or irritation ran through her, 
shook her as though it were part of her own life; 
and this, indeed, was what things seemed likely to 
come to between herself and Shaen: an intolerable 
staleness, their only hope—and this for her no hope 
at all—the continual lighting of fresh fires upon 
fresh altars. 

In these days her mother-in-law clung to her; 
had lost that air of rather scornful, quick impatience 
which she had been used to show her. For the 
first time she was beginning to realise her eldest son 
was less than perfect, though even now she would 
not have acknowledged it. “You don’t know how to 
manage him, that’s what’s the matter,” she would 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


295 

say; forgetting how impossible she had found it to 
manage her own husband. 

But all the same she clung to Henrietta. “Do 
you know what Gerty said to me about you in one 
of her letters when we w'ere in India? That you 
were like a cool hand on the forehead; and somehow 
or other I am beginning to think that she was right. 
I get so tired now, so frightfully tired, and they 
all talk so loud, much louder than people did in my 
day. We were too much in India, we were too 
much away from the children. All the same, they 
used to adore me when they were little; but everyone 
changes. I don’t believe they care a pin for me 
now.” 

It is dreadful for a woman t*o think that even 
her own children have no love for her. All the 
needs of Lady Taghmony’s nature, once so easily 
satisfied by the admiration of her own little circle, 
gathered to an almost rapacious demand for the af¬ 
fections of her children; above all Gerry, whom she 
tried to imagine was still enough of a baby to be 
pulled upon her knee and kissed, clung to; Gerry!— 
in his first term at Eton and at his most off-handed 
age. 

Denise had two small children, babies who spent 
most of their time with their paternal grandmother, 
for she herself could not be bothered with them, 
though she had been too lazy to take any precau¬ 
tions against having them; not like Honora, who 
had decided that she was too busy to find time for 


296 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


babies: “In the hunting season there’s the hunt¬ 
ing, and at other times— Oh, well, there’s always 
something,” that’s what she said. 

“The babies are never well when they are with 
mommy”—that was Denise’s complaint of her own 
mother. “She gives them all sorts of sweets and 
things, and then there’s trouble with Nurse.” 

All said and done, the life of Clonross lay in 
stratas. For the moment Denise’s children were 
staying in the house; but they lived, moved, and had 
their being in the nursery under the vigilant eye 
of a trained nurse, continually at war with old 
Nanny. “It will be different when Master Ron- 
ny’s got a baby of his own,” that was what the old 
woman said. “Begob, we’ll be after showin’ yez 
what a baby’s like then! Them two of Miss De¬ 
nise’s do look to me as though you'd kept sittin’ on 
’em, the poor pale things!” 

The next strata showed young people of the 
party: Honora and Denise and their husbands and 
friends; Edwina and her friends; and, for the first 
week or so, Derrick and Gerry. It was difficult to 
move without finding oneself entangled in some 
game or sport, the youngest footman bowling to 
the two boys, or the groom muzzling ferrets. The 
last batch of puppies was entrusted to Henrietta, 
for someone must watch to see that they did not 
lick the dressing of wood-ash from off their freshly- 
bitten tails. There was also a hedgehog which had 
been found in a ditch blinded by some accident. 

“If you keep on stroking it, it won’t curl up and 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


297 


the bandage ’ull stay on,” that’s what Gerry said. 
“Just keep* it on your lap—you can stroke while 
you read.” 

These, however, were the interests of extreme 
youth. Alone with the boys, Henrietta would have 
been completely happy; but there were the grown¬ 
ups to consider. 

Life repeats itself. . . . But no, it is not even as 
sane as that: rather it stutters on, like a person 
seemingly unable to come to the end of a sentence; 
with sudden confused rushes into something un¬ 
connected with all which has gone before. For it 
seems that life and the ordinary human mind are 
unable to run smoothly for more than a very little 
space, reach confusion long before they reach any¬ 
thing else. 

At the end of a fortnight there was a dance— 
much the same sort of dance as that which had 
taken place the night when Shaen rode over to 
Greylands, some time after midnight, and called 
Henrietta down from her room; the night when 
they had seen dawn break from the bench beneath 
the medlar tree; seen the grass covered with the 
frozen bodies of the bees which had rioted through¬ 
out the long hours of sunshine. 

A small dance with a few outsiders, including 
the whole Blake party, dropping in after dinner. 
As usual, the O’FIara party had stirred up the whole 
countryside; every man, woman, and child was en¬ 
grossed in them and their doings alone. Nothing 
ran smoothly for anyone else. “The only blessing 


298 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


is we got the harvest over before they came”— 
that’s what Mr. Rorke said—“with every man tak¬ 
ing himself off on pretence of being urgently needed 
at Clonross.” Denny, the postman, was later than 
ever, not on account of love-letters this time, but 
rather because he had to stay and have “a mite of 
talk” with Denise’s nurse to “put her in a good 
frame for them poor unfortunate children,” was 
what he said. 

The summer had gathered itself together again. 
The air was warm, permeated through and through 
with that faint odour of decay, the smell of apples. 
In between the dances the young people wandered 
in and out of the open doors. 

It seemed that Shaen, save for one dance with 
his wife, was spending the whole evening with 
Nina Arbuthnot. For once Henrietta was unable 
to make him out. She felt certain that he was not 
in love with the woman. At the same time, he 
seemed unable to bear her out of his sight, though 
there was something cruelly contemptuous in the 
way in which he paraded the evident victory which 
he had gained. For it was like that now—the one 
noticeable difference in the -whole thing. Mrs. Ar¬ 
buthnot was in love, as much in love as she could 
be. Her senses were stirred; she was excited, 
shaken out of herself, madly jealous of the girls of 
the party. 

Honora and Denise were scornful about it—” 
“What people call the ‘dangerous age,’ I suppose!” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


299 


that is what they said; and wondered how Shaen 
could make such a fool of himself: contemptuous 
as youth is of those who seem to have passed the 
first bloom and yet allow their emotions to become 
evident. “Playing at being young—a sort of 
‘spring chicken,’ ” was another phrase which they 
used regarding her. 

But in this Henrietta realised that they were 
mistaken. Whoever was playing now, it was not 
Nina Arbuthnot. Life, as it seemed, was taking its 
revenge on her at last. She had been so scornful 
of women who let themselves go, showed that they 
cared for a man, allowed themselves to be injured 
or found out. All this was past, and it seemed as 
though she had come to a sort of belief that you 
could gain anything by persistence, by showing 
yourself willing to take any sort of risk, by—what 
she would have called in the old days—throwing 
yourself at a man’s head, a sort of brazen open¬ 
ness. 

No, Henrietta had no doubt about her. But Shaen 
—'Shaen whom she had seemed to know almost too 
well—baffled her. He was obsessed, he was 
triumphant. But there was more to it than this— 
a sort of excitement held him, as a man who has 
fought with rapiers holds his adversary at his mercy. 

. . . No, no—far more crude than that!—a boy 
holding a sparrow with a string to its leg, letting it 
hop—hop—no more flying, its flying days done. 
Now and then, more particularly towards the end, 


3 °° 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


he showed himself abominably rude to Mrs. Arbu- 
thnot; as though pricking at her here and there out 
of sheer wantonness, jerking his string. 

Once when she tried to bring him to book he 
turned round upon her with a look of insolent 
scorn. “You asked for it,” he said; “go on asking 
for it all the time.” He had all an Englishman’s 
contempt for the woman who gives herself: that 
“middle aged governess” streak, that, as some mod¬ 
ern writer declares, may be found in all his coun¬ 
trymen, strongly developed at the back of his own 
wantonness—at once desiring and despising. 

Henrietta danced with Bobby Horsford. It was 
towards the end of the evening, and she was hot and 
tired—wearied out with the noise, the constant 
movement. They came out of the window of the 
drawing-room where they had been dancing, and 
moved down the steps across the short lawn which 
separated the house from the first terrace. 

“The tobacco plants are still in bloom in the long 
border. If we lean over the wall, we shall get the 
scent of them.” That was what she said. Bobby 
was a comfortable person to be with—one did not 
need to explain things to him. If he did not un¬ 
derstand, one just left them or meandered on, and 
he never even thought of taking offence. There 
was no need for Henrietta to tell him that she 
wanted something apart from humanity—something 
pure and sweet and growing. He would not have 
understood what she meant if she had done so, 
though he might have soothed her with his kind: 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


301 

“Oh well, life is pretty rotten, but, all the same, 
things generally turn up trumps in the end.” 

There was the same bench from which Arbuthnot 
had heard Shaen’s declaration four years ago; 
though—and there you have it, that stutter, which 
repeats, without ever getting anything quite the 
same—it was Mrs. Arbuthnot and Shaen, absent 
from the last three dances, who were in possession 
this time: or rather, to speak more precisely, she 
who sat there, with her hands pressed down upon 
the stone at either side of her, looking up at Shaen, 
who leant against the curving buttress of the high 
wall. 

“After all that’s been between us!” was what she 
was saying. And he laughed: that sort of laugh 
which is so killing to any woman—the laugh of a 
man who has had everything he wants and is at an 
end with her. 

“You are a cad!” she said, “a cad!—to make a 
woman care for you, and then to behave as you have 
done. You can call yourself what you like—no 
titles on earth would make you any different. A 
cad—a rotten cad!” 

She beat her hands up and down upon the bench, 
and Shaen laughed again. Henrietta could see the 
way in which he tossed his head, throwing back that 
lock of hair which still refused to remain closely 
plastered down like the rest, covering his head in a 
dark, smooth casque. 

“Anyhow, you can never say that again—that 
I’m 'not a man’—I’ve proved that, eh?” His voice, 


3 02 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


his whole pose, was triumphant; he swaggered 
without moving. 

“If I hadn't thought that you really cared, that 
you were different to other men, do you think I—” 
She broke off in a passion of tears. 

“My dear girl, come to that, no man is different.” 

Horsford, who had turned a little aside from his 
partner, had his head bent, shading a match to light 
his cigarette, not altogether hearing what was said, 
did not realize who the couple beneath the ter¬ 
race were. Just as he was beginning to chuckle 
over “some ’un gettin’ a wiggin’,” Henrietta turned 
to him, laid her hand upon his arm. 

“I think we will go back to the house,” she said. 

Even then it was not until they were half across 
the lawn that the knowledge of something of what 
had happened flooded in upon him. It seemed as 
though he were fated to be with Henrietta at mo¬ 
ments such as this—he who hated anything in the 
way of a scene, as only your complete Anglo-Saxon 
can. Not that there was anything of that sort here : 
afterwards he felt that it would have been easier if 
there had been. Honora stamped and wept over 
her troubles, and there you had something to soothe, 
something to “get around,” as it were. But no one 
would have dared touch Henrietta when she was as 
upright as she was now, walking by his side, back to 
the house. 

It was only as they came into the light, flooding 
from one of the open windows, that he realized her 
deadly pallor, the expression of her face as she 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


303 


turned to him with a smile, her eyes wide and dazed 
as though she had been jactually and physically 
struck. 

“Look here, Bobby, I’m awfully tired. I don’t 
think I will dance any more to-night. You won’t 
tell anyone, will you? I will just slip round to 
the side door and in up the back stairs to bed. 
No one will miss me.’’ 

She had no idea of making a martyr of herself, 
but Bobby Hors ford felt the desperate pathos, the 
undeniable truth, of that last sentence, and cursed 
the O’Haras and their lot—always excepting Hon- 
ora. 

“I shall miss you,” he said. “Everything is dif¬ 
ferent when you are there—sort of runs in tune, 
you know. But, by Jove, you do look done up! 
Go on up to bed.—I wonder if you would 
care to have Honora look in at you—see if there’s 
anything you want?” 

She shook her head without speaking; and with 
a dull feeling of hopelessness—which in some way 
responded to hers—he shook his also. It was no 
good offering her Honora; it was no good offering 
her anyone or anything—even that fool Shaen, who 
had spoiled his own pitch. Life was rotten: and, 
after all, there were times when there seemed 
no possible chance of things turning out right, even 
at the very end. 

• •••••• 

When Shaen came up to bed it was already day¬ 
light. Henrietta lay upon one side, her face turned 



3 ° 4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


away from the window, her eyes shut. Thinking 
she was asleep, her husband crept in softly, with¬ 
out speaking, turned back the clothes and lay down 
beside her. Through her closed lids she felt his 
eyes, quick and bright, upon her face, knew exactly 
the sort of humour he was in—something between 
excitement and triumph, mingled with uneasiness. 
For it seemed as though he could never deceive 
her without that feeling of a truant boy, half 
frightened, half desirous of being found out so that 
he could brag of his doings. 

As to Henrietta, her mind was working with an 
almost incredible swiftness, as it could do; for it 
was the putting of things into words, alone, which 
came so difficult to her. She knew that Shaen 
would sleep late, probably till close upon eleven; 
that Lady Taghmony would be down early, or, 
rather, earlier than the young people, for she was 
restless in these days, had gone back to her early- 
rising habits of those old days in India. 

At half-past nine Henrietta went down to break¬ 
fast. Shaen had not stirred as she got out of bed 
and slipped through to his room to dress having 
gathered her own clothes together from out of 
drawers and cupboards. 

Lady Taghmony came into the dining room a 
few minutes after her; Lord Taghmony was al¬ 
ready there, reading the Field. He had a sort of 
fancy for his daughter-in-law—“Hal never gets 
fussed,” that’s what he said—and had looked up 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


305 

smiling when she came into the room, then buried 
himself in his paper as his wife appeared. 

A few minutes later Bobby Horsford joined the 
party. Then Mrs. Arbuthnot and Denise’s hus¬ 
band, Captain Armfield. Henrietta was glad of this; 
it helped to make the thing she had to say more 
natural, for she shrank, with the intense repugnance 
of a proud woman, from any sort of scene, from 
the appearance of going off in a huff, though she 
must go. She could not just stay on as if nothing 
had happened: must have time to collect herself, 
for it was impossible to think clearly, frayed round 
by the whole O’Hara party. Fortunately they did 
not seek for motives, and she slid her own small 
plans easily enough into the general conversation. 
Now that the dance was over she would drive over 
to Grey lands, leaving the bulk of her things at 
Clonross, and spend two or three days with her 
father. She had an idea Mrs. Arbuthnot glanced 
up at her, curiously, sharply; but no one else took 
much notice of what she said, all alike too much en¬ 
grossed in their own plans or grievances; flat and 
depressed after the excitement of the night before, 
the constant succession of late hours. And, after 
all, Henrietta always took her own way, quietly and 
most often alone: they were used to that. There 
was no change in her appearance, exquisitely neat 
and dainty as ever; she was no paler than usual. If 
she had been dying, indeed, they would scarcely 
have noticed it; or if they did, sympathised, with 


3°6 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


an easy “What a pity!’’—picked up the thread of 
their own affairs pretty well where they had dropped 
it. 

Horsford offered to drive her over to Greylands, 
and she would start early. Why not at once? 
There was nothing to do, and they were both long¬ 
ing for fresh air. She wondered if it would be 
difficult after the evening before and came to the 
conclusion that it would be easier with him than 
with anyone else: there was no need for any ex¬ 
planation, and it was certain that he would not 
worry her with questions. 

Half an hour later as she came downstairs, fol¬ 
lowed by a servant carrying her bag, she found 
Mrs. Arbuthnot busy with the flowers in the hall. 

“I told Lady Taghmony I would do them for 
her,” she said; “everybody seems to have gone to 
pieces this morning.” 

She had filled a tall vase with Michaelmas daisies, 
stood back from them with her head a little on one 
side surveying her work. She was dressed in a 
mauve pleated skirt and lawn blouse to match. Hen¬ 
rietta had an idea that she had chosen those special 
flowers and started the decorative scheme in the hall 
with a purpose, an eye to special effect, judging from 
the way in which she glanced up the stairs as Henri¬ 
etta opened her door and came out upon the landing. 
Her eyes and cheekbones were a very little red¬ 
dened : she had that alert and nervous air of a small 
dog, ready to snap. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


307 

“Oh, it’s, you! Lord Shaen’s not going with you 
then?” 

“Oh no. I’m only running over for a day or two 
to see my father. I have been away from him so 
much, you know.” Henrietta spoke lightly, deter¬ 
mined that she would not allow the other woman 
to guess at her knowledge of the night before, imag¬ 
ine that she could drive her away, hurt her; for to 
anyone like Mrs. Arbuthnot triumph meant far more 
than happiness or love. 

“Shaen’s in bed still, fast asleep—lazy wretch!” 
She turned away as Horsford came round to the 
front door with the outside car; then hesitated, 
standing in the porch, glancing back at the other 
woman. She was carrying a parasol and handful 
of flowers, reason enough for not offering to shake 
hands. “Good-bye. I shan’t be likely to see you 
again,”' she said, with that calm, limpid glance 
which always made the other woman feel uncom¬ 
fortable, set her wondering how much she knew, 
and, moving down the steps, swung herself up on 
to the opposite seat to Horsford; while the serv¬ 
ants fastened her bag between them, and the little 
grey mare, which was Shaen’s newest and most pre¬ 
cious possession—bought because he wanted it, and 
given to her to ease his conscience—snatched at 
the bit, taut and trembling td be* off. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Shaen appeared over at Greylands between tea and 
dinner that evening. He rode straight into the 
stableyard and flung his reins to Jimmy as usual— 
morosely silent, regardless of the groom’s ingratiat¬ 
ing grin—then passed through to the back of the 
house—for once without so much as a glance to¬ 
wards Cooky or the other maids, hovering with a 
half-smile, expectant of the usual careless greeting, 
smile, familiar word of chaff for which they would 
have hung about, neglecting their work, through¬ 
out the entire afternoon. 

Rorke was out. Shaen realised this as he passed 
through the servants’ hall, saw the little group gath¬ 
ered together at one end of the long table being 
entertained by Patsy—the farrier from Clogrhoe, 
Denny the postman, and a couple of old women— 
all five of them drinking coal-black tea out of their 
saucers, one old woman supping with her pipe still 
in the corner of her mouth, their heads inclined, 
their long mouths drawn down, their under-lips 
projecting; their eyes bright with curiosity over 
some piece of gossip which Denny was dealing out 
to them in his raucous brogue, breaking off as 
Shaen entered: 

“Begob! It’s the lord from above!” scrambling 

to his feet with that bob that was half a curtsey; 

308 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


309 


gathering his long coat about him, grinning and 
pulling his forelock, his eyes all ways at once. But 
Shaen had no word or look for any of them, passing 
on into the hall with a flushed and scowling face, 
shouting for his wife. 

She answered him from the drawing-room, and 
he entered that pale apartment, stood just inside the 
door, glowering at her: vital, handsome and hot- 
blooded; so overwhelming that those pale ghosts of 
little old ladies who—or so Henrietta had always 
felt—haunted the place, shrank back, rustling 
among the faded curtains, melting into the small, 
tightly-buttoned, stiff chairs; for none of the men 
had ever entered this room in the good old days, 
keeping to their own place, round the dining-room 
table—or under it—in the gun-room, the hall or 
stables; choosing the company of the grooms rather 
than that of their own womenkind, while the young 
ladies simpered and chattered and sewed; compar¬ 
ing their love affairs, in that octagonal morning- 
room where the O’Brians’ sow had followed them. 

Shaen did not remember having ever seen Hen¬ 
rietta there before, and this conjoined with her atti¬ 
tude, took him aback. For she was sitting on the 
step of the open French window, her hands folded 
in her lap, doing nothing, in that quiet way so 
unintelligible to any O’Hara, immensely busy over 
nothing at all from morning till night, in precisely 
the same attitude as that in which he had found her 
that day when he flung the little pendant into the 
iMoy—and it was things like these, pictures, ex- 


3io 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


pressions, which he remembered far more than 
other people’s words. 

“What are you doing here?'’ 

“Nothing, but I wanted to be alone.” 

“That’s one for me, I suppose? All the same, 
that’s not what I meant. Ugh! what a wretched 
barn of a place this drawing-room is! It ’ud give 
me the jim-jams if I had to sit here. What the 
devil do you choose it for?” 

“No one ever comes in here. The .servants have 
a sort of an idea it’s haunted. I used to sit here 
when I was a small girl, wanted to think out some¬ 
thing, make up my mind.” 

“What do you want to think about, make up your 
mind about now?” he questioned her uneasily; for 
Hors ford had looked at him “damned queerly” at 
luncheon-time. “You think a jolly sight too much, 
that’s what wrong with you, Hal. Sure to good¬ 
ness everything is plain enough sailing now!” He 
flung it at her with an—“I say so, so take it at 
that—all plain sailing.” 

Henrietta turned away her head, her hands 
clasped in her lap, her fine, pale profile outlined 
against the dark ilex on the farther side of the 
lawn, slim and small in her plain white, serge: so 
slim and small and quiet that Shaen was conscious 
of that feeling which overcomes a man who is try¬ 
ing to hold, or manipulate, something too fine for 
his clumsy finger and thumb—you simply couldn’t 
get hold of Henrietta, pin her down. It was exas¬ 
perating, but there it was; and it was this which 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3 11 

drew him back to her, more especially when, as 
now, he had come to the end of any other woman, 
of a grosser, more blatant type. 

He moved across the room and leant against the 
window-frame, glancing from her round the room. 
No wonder that the servants regarded the place 
as being haunted! It gave him the creeps, with 
its queer air of waiting until all the living people 
were gone, to start whispering—a shocked, sibilant 
whisper. For every scrap of furniture, every fold 
of drapery in the place, was queerly human in its 
own shadowy fashion, as though the people who 
once used the room had, in some way or other, dis¬ 
solved into it, amalgamated with it; the very scent 
of the room seemed different to any other—a min¬ 
gling of pot-pourri and death. 

For the moment Shaen was deeply depressed, 
sated; more than a little disgusted with himself. 
As always at such times, his Celtic fancy began 
to work. Old Nanny’s tales of the Little People 
and other hauntings came back to him. He was 
overcome by fear for the future, a sense of com¬ 
plete distaste for the present. 

“Look here, Hal, why did you go off like that? 
What the devil have I done now? I suppose it’s 
got somethin’ to do with me? Why, your father’s 
not even at home—I could tell that by Patsy’s beano 
in the servants’ hall. Hang it all, it isn’t fair to 
go off and leave a chap like that, make me look 
like a fool—an’ when we’d been gettin’ on so 
smoothly, all so jolly together.” 


312 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“I was on the terrace when you were talking to 
Mrs. Arbuthnot last night,” said Henrietta. She 
spoke almost beneath her breath, for it was dread¬ 
ful to her to have to drag things out into words, 
the light of day. 

Pie flushed crimson, staring at her, his blue eyes 
wide with the bright prominence which they showed 
when he was in any way taken aback: 

“For how long?” 

“Only a minute.” 

“Well, what about it, eh?” His voice had that 
high, half-hysterical note. 

“I think there must have been a good deal be¬ 
tween you for her—her—to speak as she did.” 

“How?” 

“As if she were—” Henrietta was going to say 
“hurt,” but, after all, it was not that, and she sub¬ 
stituted “wronged, insulted.” 

“Well, and what did I say?” He questioned 
her uneasily. 

“You laughed!” Her voice was scarcely audible. 

He laughed again now, though his face flushed 
even more deeply. “Well, that ’ull show you! If 
a man laughs at a woman there can’t be much be¬ 
tween them, eh?” 

Henrietta rose to her feet and stood against the 
opposite side of the window-frame, facing her 
husband, her hands pressed back at either side as 
though she were drawing herself away from him, 
her face very white. 

“You might have said anything—anything, and it 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3i3 

would not have given you away like that—oh, hor¬ 
rible r 

“What do you mean?” 

“The insolence, the cruelty of it.” 

“My dear girl, Nina Arbuthnot is jolly well able 
to look after herself, let me tell you that.” 

“Oh, it was not her I was thinking of.” 

“Well then, what—” 

“For you—you to be like that—crowing! Crow¬ 
ing over a woman who . . . Oh, there was no mis¬ 
take about it.” 

“Look here, Hal! You talk of my being insult¬ 
ing. ... You remember that night when I rode 
over here after a dance, the night we sat under the 
medlar tree? Oh, well, I suppose that Arbuthnot 
woman had insulted me then, pretty well as much 
as any woman can insult a man.” 

“That doesn’t make any difference.” 

“How d’ye mean—it doesn’t make any differ¬ 
ence? Good God, you don’t imagine that I care— 
care twopence for the woman!” 

“Oh, don’t you see, it's worse if you don't! I 
know you don’t, and that’s what makes it so awful 
—the ruthlessness of it. I know now—on that 
first day we met her at the Blakes’ you had some¬ 
thing in your mind, and you have just gone on. . . . 
It isn’t like you—it was never like you—unless— 
unless—” 

“What?” 

“You can hold to revenge, the meanest sort of 
revenge, though you can’t hold to anything else.” 




314 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Well, that’ll show you—people can’t hanky- 
panky with me.” He was actually pleased with 
himself. “But I’ve done with her now. I said 
I’d pay her back, an’ I’ve paid her back—it’s fin¬ 
ished with. I swear to you, Hal, I’m speaking the 
truth. I never want to see her again. She’s 
taken herself off this afternoon—she’d that much 
sense anyhow—left before I did. The whole 
thing’s at an end—over and done with—and no one 
any the worse for it.” 

She did not answer this but looked at him curi¬ 
ously, her hazel eyes full upon him. “No one any 
the worse for it?” Was he so hardened, so insen¬ 
sitive, that he could really feel that? Or was it a 
sort of pagan unmorality which made it impossible 
for him to judge between right and wrong? But 
no, not that, for how quick he was at judging and 
condemning a woman! 

“It would have been better if you had cared,” 
she said. 

“Well, anyhow, it hasn’t hurt her; put her in her 
place for once; sort o’ place she ought to be in— 
Piccadilly, for instance. Look here, Hal, d’ye mean 
to say you didn’t realize that’s the sort she is— 
would have been all along if she hadn’t been so 
damned careful to take everything and give noth- 
mg? 

“Ronny, do you still mean to say you can’t un¬ 
derstand that I’m not thinking of her?” 

“What is it, then?” He stretched out one hand 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3i5 


to take hers, and, finding them pressed back against 
the shutter behind her, rested it on her shoulder, 
smoothing down her low collar. 

“Look here, Hal darling, don’t let’s quarrel over 
a woman like that—she’s not worth it. I tell you 
I don’t care a twopenny damn about her. You and 
she—why, you’ve only got to look at yourself to see 
that you’re not in the same class—no reason for 
you to start on getting jealous of anyone, my 
dear, much less a—” 

She drew herself away so sharply that she stum¬ 
bled against the step, and putting out one hand to 
catch at the shutter flung it out between them, dis¬ 
persing a cloud of flies, already settled there for 
the winter. 

“Don’t touch me—I don’t want ever to see you 
again*—ever—ever—ever!’’ she cried, and slipped 
past him out of the room. 

So there was an end, for the moment. He could 
not run over the house halloaing for her, to find 
himself confronted with a locked door and all the 
servants gaping and chattering. How unjust 
women were! Hang it all, he had broken with 
Nina Arbuthnot!—had explained clearly enough in 
all conscience that the whole thing meant nothing 
more than what, in the old days, he would have 
called a “do”: the paying back of that unforget¬ 
table insult. It was not as though he cared a hang 
for her! 

All the way back to Clonross he told himself this, 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3 j 6 

repeating it again and again, with a vague idea that, 
somehow or other, Henrietta ought to be pleased at 
the way in which he had asserted himself. 

Throughout the next three days he sulked, made 
no attempt to see his wife. Then Lady Taghmony 
intervened. Something was patched up between 
the two, and Henrietta came back to Clonross—or, 
rather, the shadow, which might be called ‘'the ap¬ 
pearance” of Henrietta—“just to let people see 
there’s nothing really wrong between you.” That 
was what her mother-in-law said, wheedling her, 
working on her pride, her affection, with: “It 
would break your father’s heart if there was any 
serious trouble between you and Ronny—poor 
Ronny! He’s so perfectly wretched, you know.” 

And wretched he was, there was no other word 
for it. At a complete loose end, all conciliation and 
diffidence and tenderness towards his wife as in the 
old days—the old beginning to the old end; while in 
the old way, also, Henrietta melted towards him, 
wondering where she had failed him: feeling him 
more of her child than ever—much, much more, and 
there was the difference: comforting him until he 
was so much at ease that the whole Arbuthnot 
affair was blotted out from his mind, his very 
memory. 

They stayed on at Clonross till the end of No¬ 
vember; then the Taghmonys left and the young 
couple went back to Greylands for a while. By 
this time Shaen was once more becoming restless, 
continually receiving letters from London; irritable 




ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3i7 


and discontented. He seemed to have lost his old 
taste for hunting. “Always the same people, the 
same giddy round,” he said. Very soon, almost 
immediately after Christmas, he went off to London. 
“Just for two or three days. There are things to 
be settled, people I must see. No use draggin’ 
you over there, Hal. I know you hate London. 
And anyhow, it won’t be more than a week at the 
very most,” was what he said. He had completely 
forgotten that notion of Lady Fair’s, that Henrietta 
was about to have a child: was not in the very least 
disappointed at his mistake, for the simple reason 
that, having served its purpose, the idea went clean 
out of his head, was replaced, now, by the belief that 
nothing could be nicer for her than to stay on in 
Ireland with her father. 


CHAPTER XX 


It was an elusive spring. The snowdrops- and aco¬ 
nites were out before the end of January, dotting 
that dark green lawn which remained unfaded 
throughout the entire year. The air was so mild 
that it was possible to sit out of doors basking in 
the sunshine that flooded the stable-yard, the whole 
of the back of the house. After this, however, 
came snow, cold winds, sleet; and, following upon 
that, endless beating rain, with something insist¬ 
ent and personal, cruel, in its force; the sweep of 
it finding out every crack in the old house, slicing 
its way in beneath each defective slate, pouring 
down the pipes, soaking the ground beneath; ceas¬ 
ing, when it did cease, just enough to drip, drip, 
drip—with a sound far more deadly than the rain it¬ 
self, utterly at variance with the human pulse, with 
every other sound in nature. 

The noise of the rain penetrated through Henriet¬ 
ta’s dreams; streamed through everything that she 
thought and said and read, punctuating everything 
in the wrong place, beating a devil’s tattoo to the 
youth and vitality which seemed as though it were 
being washed out of her. 

Battalions of clouds moved across the moun¬ 
tains, grey vapours swam aTove the river and 

318 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3i9 


loughs. If the sun did shine for an hour it showed 
the whole countryside sodden with rain, glinting in 
puddles. . . . An hour ?—ah no, it was never that: 
a quarter at most, and then the whole thing started 
over again, with tearing sheets of rain. 

Riding along the roads—for she was possessed 
by a restlessness which would not allow her to 
sit quietly at home—Henrietta met people coming 
and going to the markets and shops or about their 
business in the fields, all alike drawn down with the 
rain. The girls’ white ankles gleamed, their carna¬ 
tion cheeks glowed beneath the hoods of their cloaks, 
heavy with rain, pulled up over their heads. The 
better-off men were enveloped in as many coats as 
an onion; the poorer swathed in sacks which left 
their legs unsheltered, their trousers glued around 
them. The proud who went in shoes were the 
worst off of all, for Malony the cobbler bought 
up all the chemist’s spare pasteboard bottle wrap¬ 
pings, for re-soling them with: “An’ no other 
leather ter equal it in the whole of County Mey-ooo,” 
he would say. 

Henrietta tried not to watch for Denny, strug¬ 
gling up the drive, “with the soul washed clear out 
of him,” as he said. But somehow or other she 
was unable to keep away from the window on the 
staircase, the only window which looked that way. 
The days when he did not come stretched like a 
decade before her. She endeavoured to believe that 
he kept the letters until there were enough to make 
the journey worth while; but in the same moment 


3 2 ° 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


she realized the days which slipped by between each 
letter, apart from bills, receipts, advertisements or 
begging epistles. 

It seemed, indeed, as though the world had been 
washed away from them, as though they themselves 
were being beaten into the earth with no one to 
help them, intolerably remote. The very kitchen, 
warm and bright with its glowing fire, where the 
servants laughed together, joking with the stable- 
boys and Patsy, might have belonged to a different 
world. For they burned coal there, coal which 
spluttered and blazed, glowing red, not peat, as they 
did in the dining-room—for no reason save that 
they had never burned anything else; peat which 
may be so cosy for any two to sit close gossiping 
over, but which has no power to brighten or warm 
a room overhung with that sort of gloom, that 
sense of waiting for something, which oppressed 
both Henrietta and her father. 

They had a box of books from Dublin each fort¬ 
night; by the time it reached them the books in 
their sodden box reeked of that damp which seemed 
to have become the universal uniform of the place, 
and everything in it. The daily papers—the Morn¬ 
ing Post and Pall Mall Gazette, of necessity a day 
late—were in a pulp before they reached them. 

Henrietta could not settle to read. She opened 
one book and then another, but it seemed impossi¬ 
ble to reach the end of them. In those novels which 
moved slowly towards that conventional happy end¬ 
ing, which so many people like to have depicted for 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3 21 


them, she felt something of the unreality of life, 
or was set wondering what was wrong between her 
and Shaen—how it was that they had missed so 
much; while the sadder ones, more particularly the 
Russian and Scandinavian literature, with its air of 
tragic fatality, hurt her, and she could not af¬ 
ford to be hurt; travels were too detached; biogra¬ 
phies told of other people’s lives, and, with the 
egotism of youth, she was engrossed in her own. 

She and her father spoke less and less to each 
other, for they had reached a point when there 
seemed nothing left to say. It had become impossi¬ 
ble to talk of commonplace things, and they shrank 
from all that they were really thinking about. If 
they could once have let themselves go, stormed 
against anything—even the weather—it would have 
been better for them. During their solitary walks 
Philip Rorke would curse his son-in-law, the whole 
Taghmony family, but he kept his curses to himself. 
Always over-punctilious over that question of in¬ 
terfering with the conscience, the mental liberty, of 
anyone, he never allowed a single word of dis¬ 
paragement to escape him; never even inquired 
whether Henrietta was hearing from her husband, 
never allowed himself to so much as glance at the 
letters, few enough in all conscience, which Denny 
brought her. 

Lord and Lady Taghmony were over in Paris, 
together for a while until some sort of quarrel, or 
some new fancy, whisked Lord Taghmony away to 
Algeria. Henrietta had but few letters from her 



322 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


mother-in-law. Sometimes she enquired after 
Shaen, lamenting that he would not write, blaming 
Henrietta for telling her so little; at others she took 
on a pathetic pretence at knowing all there was to 
know about him, as though she herself heard from 
him every day. His sisters seemed to know even 
less than his mother. Now and then there was a 
hasty line, generally asking her to see about some¬ 
thing at Clonross, which ended with: “What in 
the world is Ronny doing? We never see or hear 
anything of him nowadays.” Again, there were 
letters which included some message for Shaen him¬ 
self, concerning some horse or dog, some question 
of mating or breeding—which the whole family dis¬ 
cussed with equal openness—showing that there was 
an idea that he was fairly often over in Ireland. 

There were irregular letters from Shaen himself, 
sometimes two or three in one week, mere short 
scrawls. He was always just coming back to Ire¬ 
land—just coming, but never came. Apart from 
these small groups of letters, there were intervals of 
three or four weeks without a word from him. 
One letter was headed as having been written from 
Denise’s house in Norfolk; but there was a note 
from Denise herself by that very same post with a 
message to Shaen—careless Shaen! so stupid, or 
was it willfully cruel?—in his intrigues. 

Rorke must have known something of what was 
going on. He could not have helped knowing, feel¬ 
ing it through and through him, loving his daughter 
as he did. But for all that he made no sign. “If 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


323 


she wants to tell me anything she will.” That was 
what he thought, suffering acutely, with a feeling 
as though his whole soul were being drawn out 
of his body towards her. 

It was the last week in February before the rain 
really ceased. Even then it seemed as though the 
weather could not make up its mind to be fine, for 
the sunshine was broken by intervals of dull, 
brooding, thundery and overcast skies. And yet 
with the cessation of that wall of rain, interspersed 
Detween them, or so it seemed; or, worst still, that 
nerve-chafing drip, it seemed as though Henrietta 
and her father awoke to something more like real 
life; began slowly and with difficulty to drag them¬ 
selves) out of a water-logged grave. 

The first sign of the change came with Henriet¬ 
ta’s suggestion that they should ride together. Be¬ 
fore this she had dreaded imposing the deep melan¬ 
choly of her moods upon her father more than 
was absolutely necessary: while he himself had 
equally dreaded inflicting his company upon her, 
made sure that she wished to be alone—the tragi¬ 
cally ridiculous pair. Now, once again, they rode 
and drove together, and there was some sort of 
comfort in that. With the first few fine days Mr. 
Fielden and Father O’Sullivan also emerged, com¬ 
ing over to Greylands to tea, dropping in during 
that hour when a fire was still so welcome, though 
the drenched skies outside were blue with the length¬ 
ening days, merging into a pale primrose, washed- 
out vermilion; for it seemed as though the elements 



3 2 4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


themselves were anaemic, drained of all vital colour¬ 
ing—everything, indeed, apart from the grass, 
wickedly green. 

Quite suddenly Henrietta’s mood of deadly ac¬ 
quiescence in things as they were, broke, and she 
was overcome with a far more healthy resentment. 
It was impossible that the position between her¬ 
self and Shaen should go on. The feeling of spring 
in the air whipped her into a new, raw life; a sense 
of her own pain, the tragedy of the unmated or 
mismated. She realized the insult which lay in be¬ 
ing left there until she was wanted, like a piece of 
luggage—to be called, or even sent for. If he still 
loved her they must live together. Thinking it 
over, she realised the strangeness of the whole posi¬ 
tion: the fact that there had never been any real 
break between them, and yet by every letter she 
received from him, by every one of her own replies— 
each time more difficult and strained—there was 
evidence of a widening breach. 

For two or three days she carried the thought of 
all this in her mind, going over it to herself, taking 
out the facts and looking at them squarely. 
Strangely enough, that deadly longing for her hus¬ 
band which had overcome her during those months 
of rain was lessened by her more practical realiza¬ 
tion that now or never was the time for some 
rapprochement between them. 

The difficulty of putting the thing into words, of 
embarking upon any discussion of what her father 
had tacitly acknowledged to be altogether her own 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


325 


affair still remained. We all know how, when any 
expression of a wish or feeling gets to this stage, 
one is baulked by it as one may be by a quite easy 
jump once missed; how, when the thing does get 
itself into words, it comes with a rush—as shocking 
as the betrayal of something essentially private, as 
unexpected by oneself as by everyone else. 

Henrietta and her father had dined together with¬ 
out saying much: as always, polite and considerate 
to each other. Indeed, their whole intercourse be¬ 
gan to carry something of the aspect of a formal 
reception for two ; as it must do when people, nearly 
related in every sort of way, find some subject im¬ 
possible of discussion between them. 

They had sat over the fire after dinner trying to 
read. It was so mild that the long window close to 
Henrietta’s chair still stood open, and the air en¬ 
tered in great soft puffs, filling the room with the 
breath of spring; bringing with it the sound of the 
river, still heavy in flood. 

The parlourmaid brought in the tray with whisky 
and syphons before she went off to bed, and Hen¬ 
rietta got up to mix a drink for her father, standing 
on the hearthrug for a moment looking down at 
him. It came out then, quite suddenly—that famil¬ 
iar phrase of the O’Haras so alien to her and her 
breed: 

“I can’t stand it!” 

Philip Rorke put down his tumbler on the table 
by him and drew himself upright. “Thank God!” 
he said. 


/ 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


326 

For one moment Henrietta stared at him, missing 
his meaning; then, realizing his sense of relief that 
the long silence upon this one thing which really 
mattered had been broken between them, she 
dropped to her knees at his side and laid her head 
against his shoulder, while he put his arm round 
her, patting her awkwardly. 

“There, there, there. . . Her tears were like 
the breaking of a drought. He felt this and had 
the sense not to try to check them, his paramount 
idea of encouraging everybody to keep the firmest 
possible hold upon themselves for once in abeyance. 
As she became a little calmer he spoke. 

“Something had got to happen,” he said. “Things 
could not go on as they were. I have been feeling 
that—been feeling the whole thing—too damnably! 
You realize that, don’t you, my dear? I daren’t 
interfere—daren’t!” He hesitated, then added with 
a bitter laugh: “It seems to me like a sort of creep¬ 
ing paralysis; one ought not to allow oneself to 
feel like that—so dead scared of interference. It 
was my duty to have spoken long before—tried to 
help you, but . . . Oh well, you know what I am. 
I thought it was best to give you your own way— 
that old saying, you know, ‘Never put your hands 
on the reins when another person’s driving’; but 
I have been thinking—my dear, believe me, I have 
been thinking—” He put up one hand and held 

it against her hair, pressing her head to his shoulder 

• 

“You know that I care, you know how much I 
care. And yet it seemed impossible—out of the 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


3 2 7 


question—for either of us to say anything—show 
anything. I ought to have helped you long ago. 
I tried to help you, but I went about it the wrong 
way. My one idea was to give you what you 
wanted, to help you to marry Shaen, when the 
thing that I ought to have done was to insist upon 
you waiting, knowing more of each other. . . . 
Cowardice—nothing more nor less than cowardice. 
But there, I’ve failed—always failed—with you as 
with Ireland. I was all right with India; I didn’t 
care for India.” 

“It would not have made any difference.’ 1 ’ 

“You would have loved him anyhow, that’s it— 
eh? Oh, but you can’t know that. ... If I’d 
been a different sort of father—” 

“I always cared for him. I never could care 
for anyone else. But it is not only that—there 
was no one else.” 

“You mean that I never gave you the chance of 
meeting other people?” 

“No, no, dad! You mustn’t think that—never 
think that.” She raised her head and pressed her 
cheek against his. “If I had met all the men in 
the world it could have made no difference to my 
feeling for Ronny—I know that. Nothing could 
have made any difference—nothing. Only it seems 
as though from the very beginning—the first day 
I saw him—everything was settled. ... Not for 
him,” she added in a lower voice, “but for me.” 

“You mean that you would never have married 
anyone else?” 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


328 

“That I never could! Oh, it wasn’t my doing— 
had nothing to do with me—there was no reason or 
choice. It was just there—the feeling of belong¬ 
ing, I mean; I could do nothing with it.” She 
spoke with a passion unusual to her. It seemed as 
though the repression of all those long months had 
broken at last: months and months when she had 
set her mind, not on living the full life proper to 
her youth, but rather on enduring; though never 
altogether resigned, for that is indeed a tragic qual¬ 
ity which comes with years and not with months— 
resignation, the tombstone of hope. 

“Nothing could have made any difference—noth¬ 
ing! People speak of things being pre-ordained— 
I suppose it was like that.” Her voice dropped; 
she spoke in that hesitating way, groping for the 
words to express her feeling. 

“I don’t suppose that I was ever happy; I don’t 

think I ever expected to be happy. Somehow or 

other I don’t believe that I thought for one moment 

that I was meant for it—perhaps love never does 

mean happiness, I don’t know. Mr. Fielden was 

talking of it the other day; he said that we all ex- 

• 

pected to be happy—but I don’t think I did. I 
don’t believe I thought about it. All I knew was 
that I loved Ronny. Oh, I don’t know—it wasn’t 
even that—consciously, at least. There was simply 
no one else in the world—one could think of noth¬ 
ing else, feel for no one else. It was like a wind 
that takes away one’s breath. Anyhow, there it 
was—is—” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


329 


“You still care?” 

“It is no question of caring.” She spoke almost 
beneath her breath. “I don’t know that I do care. 
It’s all so different. I used 1 to want almost more 
than anything to feel his arms’ round me, his head 
on my shoulder. I don’t think I want that now. 
Oh, I don’t know what I want. . . . But there 
could never be anything in its place—that’s what 
it comes to. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t 
care about anything. I can’t make myself take an 
interest—I can’t. I have tried—tried terribly hard 
—oh, long ago out in the West Indies. I knew it 
was dangerous to think of and care for nothing 
apart from one person, but I couldn’t help myself. 
It seemed as though I were fated—made for noth¬ 
ing else.” 

“If you realized that he still cared for you—or 
cared for someone else—would that make any dif¬ 
ference ?” 

“No—that’s just it.” Henrietta was crouched 
on the hearthrug at his side, leaning against his 
chair, her eyes on the dying fire—the grey and 
orange of the smouldering peat. “I know he cares 
for other women, but all the same I know that he 
will never care for any other woman in the way 
he has cared—still cares—for me. . . .” She hes¬ 
itated for so long that Rorke thought she had 
changed her mind about saying anything more. 
He would not prompt her. He had seen more of 
her inmost thoughts than he had ever seen before, 
and he was half ashamed, as one who—with no ex- 




330 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


pectation of any such thing—finds himself upon 
holy ground. 

The wind outside was rising, blowing in the cur¬ 
tains, rounding and bellying like the sails of a ship; 
catching up the ash on the hearth in spirals, scat¬ 
tering it over the hearthrug, over Henrietta’s dress 
—silk of that deep plum colour which Shaen had 
once loved to see her wearing. 

She stooped her head lower and flicked off the 
ash as carefully as though it were the only thing 
that mattered; then went on very slowly: 

“As much as he can care—but it’s not enough 
for me; because he must have change—other 
women. I am there at the back of his mind, or 
his heart, as the one to come back to if he were ill 
or in any sort of trouble. I am not enough for him 
because of that—other women—and now . . .” 
Once again she hesitated, then spoke more quickly 
in a low-toned rush of words: 

“He is not enough for me, because there is not 
enough of him. Not because he is not here—not 
because he doesn’t write, but just because of that. 

. . . And there never can be anyone else. So— 
oh, there you are! One must stay like this, I sup¬ 
pose—emptied out.” 

She rose to her feet and turned her back on her 
father, laying her head upon her hands, clasping 
the high mantelshelf. 

“It’s like being dead,” she said. 

Mr. Rorke got up and stood beside her, facing 
the other way. He would not look at her; was 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


33i 


determined not to seem to pry, to probe her feel¬ 
ings. For all that, he had pulled himself, for the 
time at least, out of that lethargy into which the 
so*ft Irish air had drawn him. 

Something had to be done; things could not go 
on like this. Quite suddenly, for the first time in 
all his intercourse with his daughter, he was over¬ 
come by a sense of responsibility. He hated inter¬ 
ference, and yet now, as it seemed, it was “up to 
him” to interfere. All these yea.rs he had done 
wrong. His boast of giving Henrietta a free hand, 
without encroaching upon her liberty of thought or 
action, was at an end. With a sense of passionate 
self-reproach he realized that it had been nothing 
more than weakness, the taking of the easiest way. 

He stood so upright that it seemed as though the 
last six years or so were sloughed off him. In 
India he had been regarded as a man of quick, clear 
decision, a man who was by no means to be trifled 
with. After all, it was not only the Irish air that 
had changed him but his sentiments regarding Ire¬ 
land, combined with the sudden cessation of a fixed 
routine of work. He picked up the scattered 
threads of hi'mself now, saw himself as clearly as 
he had once seen others, and arrived in one moment 
at a clear-cut decision as to what was the best thing 
to do—or rather attempt to do. For how was it 
possible to be altogether decisive in any matter 
where his son-in-law was concerned? “You may 
lead a horse to the water . . .” etc. It was impos¬ 
sible for this old adage to be more completely ap- 


33 2 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


plicable than it was here. There was something 
else, too, about “drawing water in a sieve.” But 
now, at last, he realized his own duty in the matter. 

“Look here, Henrietta, that husband of yours 
has been away quite long enough. People drift 
apart and begin to see things out of all perspective; 
but it’s impossible to say that your married life is 
at an end when you are only nineteen.” 

“I know that—as long as he wants me—” 

“He has probably got himself entangled with all 
sorts of new people. You know he is very like a 
child in a great many ways—lives in the moment. 
Actually you are younger than he is, but in so many 
ways you are much older. You have the better 
head of the two, and that gives you a sort of re¬ 
sponsibility. Look here, it seems to me that we 
have all got hopelessly tied up—you and I here have 
been stagnating; that’s it, there is no other word for 
it, stagnating. We have let ourselves go ; we have 
got to pull ourselves together now. I believe that 
everything will come right. It mayn't be in alto¬ 
gether the same way as you had once thought; but 
married life is like that, my dear—an everlasting 
picking up of threads, starting again. 

“We are depressed—hopeless things, nerves!— 
every trifle worries us. What I suggest is this: 
let’s go over to London, pick up that truant of yours 
and go to the Continent—not to any lonely place 
where there is nothing but scenery to depend upon, 
but somewhere we’ll get plenty of amusement and 
interest. That’s what you want, too. Oh, it’s all 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


333 


my fault; I’ve let you in for it. You are old before 
your time. We will go to Monte Carlo; everything 
will look different in the sunshine. We will make 
a splash for once, and have a good time together. 
I want to get to know Shaen better; and just at 
first, anyhow, it will be easier if I’m there—he’ll 
have to pull himself together too—if I can’t grease 
the wheels somehow I can’t be much good for any¬ 
thing. You must give us this chance, my dear—a 
chance for both of us, myself equally with your 
husband. We’ve got to look after you; and see 
here, Henrietta, you have got to learn to let your- 
self be looked after. ’Pon my soul, I believe that’s 
pretty well the most necessary characteristic for 
any woman—a volte face that for me, eh?” He 
glanced at her, smiling; a glance which he took care 
to keep to the surface alone, determined not to 
see too much. 

Henrietta’s face brightened. After all, she was 
such a child. The very idea of going abroad, of 
being in the sunshine once more—real sunshine, not 
damped down as it was in Ireland—appealed to 
her like an open door to one too long house-bound. 
And perhaps, with her father and Shaen together 
—who knew what might happen ? She had honestly 
believed herself at the end of hope, but that was all 
nonsense. No one is ever completely without some 
belief in a fabulous eternity if in nothing else: no 
atheist altogether an atheist when he reaches the 
end. 

“If he would come—” she began hesitatingly. 


334 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Oh, he must come! Don’t you worry about 
that, my dear. We will sweep him off his feet, 
carry him away before he has time to think of it. 
Look here, we won’t even tell him we are coming—” 
“We had better do that.” A sad prudence pos¬ 
sessed her in spite of everything. There were so 
many other people in Shaen’s world; it would be a 
fatal mistake to start off with anything in the shape 
of a surprise visit, disturbing him when he least 
wished or expected to be disturbed. 

Rorke agreed. “I daresay you are right. We’ll 
send him a line to tell him we are coming without 
giving him time to answer.” 

So it was as bad as that, then! He was sur¬ 
prised at his daughter’s worldly wisdom, aghast at 
this fresh evidence of what she had been through. 
For what can be sadder than to knock at the door 
of a heart where you rightfully belong—tentatively, 
fearfully; conscious that there may, likely enough, 
be someone else in possession? 


CHAPTER XXI 


Three days later, having given Shaen no more 

time than was necessary to engage rooms, Henrietta 

✓ 

and her father crossed to England and were met 
by him at Euston. 

Shaen kissed his wife more quietly, in a way more 
tenderly, than he had done for a long time—al¬ 
most clung to her for one moment, as it seemed; 
then he collected their luggage, saw it on a taxi 
and got in with them; seeming altogether older, 
less excited and buoyant—though his eyes were 
restless—less “all on the top” as they used to say 
of him. 

“I couldn’t get you rooms at the place I’m in, it’s 
full up, but I have got some at Brown’s Hotel. 
It’s no distance from Jermyn Street and it’ll be 
much the same thing.” 

His look and tone were uneasy. It seemed as 
though he had lost the greater part of his old con¬ 
fidence, that he could not even feel sure of being 
believed, and Henrietta was puzzled, unable to 
realize whether he was or was not speaking the 
truth. If there was no reason for keeping apart 
from her, there also seemed no reason why he him¬ 
self could not have moved to Brown’s. 

He went with them to the hotel. There was 

335 


336 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


some talk of tea, but it was agreed that it was too 
late for that, and Rorke suggested that he should 
go back to his own hotel to dress, then join them at 
dinner and take Henrietta to the theatre. 

“I’m awfully sorry, but, you see, I didn’t know 
you were coming. If you had let me know a little 
earlier . . . it’s like this . . .” Shaen moved un¬ 
easily; his vague glance just touching his wife’s 
face, then turning away again. They had sat down 
in the lounge, gathered stupidly round a little wick¬ 
erwork table, while their luggage was taken up to 
their rooms. He was tipping this table to and fro; 
it was the first thing upon which his eyes had really 
fixed themselves, and it seemed as though nothing 
on earth mattered apart from the hopelessly ridicu¬ 
lous task of trying to make it stand upon one leg. 
A matchstand and some newspapers on the lower 
shelf slithered to the floor, and he stooped to pick 
them up with a sharp exclamation of annoyance. 

Henrietta had a feeling that everything must be 
far worse than she had thought, that he himself was 
frightened at the gulf which had opened between 
them; for his excuses were so unready, he was so 
palpably and desperately ill at ease. 

“I’m most frightfully sorry, but the fact is that 
I am absolutely fixed up for dinner—something I 
can’t get out of—too late to get out of,” he said, 
raising his head, his face still flushed from stoop¬ 
ing, and glancing at his wife with something like 
entreaty in his eyes, as though begging her to come 
to his rescue. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


337 


“To-morrow, then,” she said quietly, “it will do 
just as well to-morrow. I really am very tired. 
Perhaps you will come round in the morning, di¬ 
rectly after breakfast—that is, unless you are full 
up.” It was difficult to speak naturally, for know¬ 
ing his character—too dreadfully well as she did— 
she yet knew so little of his movements, of fiis life 
during the last two or three months, that to suggest 
their doing anything together seemed like trespass¬ 
ing on the time of a perfect stranger. All the same, 
there was that look of a child who has got himself 
into some sort of a mess, scared and uncertain. The 
feeling came over her that she must, somehow or 
other, take hold of him and, ridiculous as it seemed, 
take care of him—an old sort of feeling, as though 
all the responsibility rested with her. The common 
idea of a wife depending upon her husband, look¬ 
ing to her husband for guidance or advice, was ridic¬ 
ulous. It seemed that marriage meant nothing but 
the perpetual mothering of a child whom it was 
impossible to spank, to dose and put to bed. Her 
heart ached for him. What had he been doing? 
To what had he committed himself? There was 
something—she was perfectly certain of that. 

“You will come round to-morrow morning?” she 
repeated. 

“I don’t know if I can. Look here, Hal, Pve got 
frightfully tangled up. There are all sorts of 
things—engagements, and all that. As a matter of 
fact, before I knew you were coming, I had pretty 
well fixed to go over to Ireland. There’s something 




33 § 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


that Harris”—the agent at CTonross—“has been on 
at me about. One of the farms has fallen vacant 
and there has been a lot of trouble with tenants. 
He will be mad with me if I fail him—I really did 
promise. Anyhow, I’ll ring you up in the morning. 
I hope you won’t think me frightfully rude, sir,” he 
went on, turning towards Rorke, “but if I’d had the 
faintest idea . . .” He broke off, and once again 
his glance sought his wife’s face. 

“That’s all right; arrange it between you. We 
have been making great plans, Henrietta and I. 
She’ll tell you all about them. I’ve some letters 
to get off before dinner—anyhow, I’ll see you 
again.” 

He nodded and turned away. A feeling of flat¬ 
ness, a sense of having arrived at a complete cul- 
de-sac, overcame him as it had done his daughter. 
Seated at a writing-table in the smoking-room, he 
found it impossible to concentrate his mind on his 
letters. Somehow or other it was all like waiting 
for the bursting of a thunderstorm. What had 
that fellow been up to? Something that he was 
thoroughly ashamed of, there was no doubt about 
that—more than half bored with, and yet unable to 
break loose from. He realized how his glance had 
sought his wife’s face. Well, there was only one 
hope for it, they must find their own way out; 
happily enough with a husband and wife both young, 
both perfectly normal, this might be easier 
than with any other two people in the same posi¬ 
tion. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 339 

Directly his father-in-law had gone Shaen got 
up. 

“Look here Hal, I’m frightfully sorry, but I 
can’t stay now. Dinner at seven, and all that— 
I wish to goodness you’d let me know before.” 
His tone took on a sudden sharp resentment, as 
though that idea of bolstering himself up with a 
grievance had come back to him once more—the 
old idea which he had so often depended upon. 
“These sort of surprise visits are never any good. 
Anyhow, what’s the idea of it all?” 

“Will you come upstairs with me? It’s impos¬ 
sible to talk among all these people.” She was in 
despair at the turn things were taking. 

“I can’t come now—I tell you I’ve got to dress 
for dinner. To-morrow morning—I’ll ring you 
up to-morrow morning. Anyhow, I’ve told you 
I’ve got to run over to Ireland. There are all sorts 
of things to be seen to.” 

Henrietta rose and stood facing him. She had 
hardened, stiffened. There must be some break in 
this intolerable network of evasion. She could do 
nothing for Shaen, desperate in some queer way as 
she knew him to be, if he refused to see her, just 
slipped away, went back to Ireland the very day 
after she crossed over to London! She did not 
greatly care what people said or thought, but this 
was beyond everything: it would set the whole 
country-side talking. Besides, they would be no 
further forward, just changing places like buckets 
in a well. 



340 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Shaen, it can’t go on like this. Tve been think¬ 
ing it over. We’ve been talking it over, father 
and I.” 

“Oh, you’ve been talkin’ it over, have you*? 
Don’t you think it would be best for us to keep our 
own affairs to ourselves?” 

“I don’t want you to take it like that, Ronny.” 
She spoke very gently, for she realized the state 
that he was in. “We wefe only making plans, be¬ 
cause it seemed that things could not go on as they 
have been. We were planning father and I, to go 
abroad together and to try and persuade you to come 
with us.” She hesitated, and then went on, with 
that intense difficulty, that slowness which hampered 
her in moments such as these: “Ronny, we didn’t 
seem to have quarreled when you left, but now . . . 
Oh, I don’t know what’s happened! We are miles 
and miles apart from each other. Dad thought, and 
I thought, if we all went away together somewhere, 
where everything was different, we might pick up 
some of the threads again—” 

“I don’t see what you mean”; he spoke obsti¬ 
nately. “People don’t live everlastingly in each 
other’s pockets these days.” 

“I know, but it’s close upon three months—” 
“Three months!” He repeated the words after 
her as though he himself were appalled. “Three 
months—nonsense!—Oh well, all the same you’ll 
have to wait for a little. It’s not my fault, I 
tell you—there’s this business—all sorts of 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


34* 


things. . . He seemed somehow or other as 
though he were at his wits’’ end, as though he didn’t 
know what to do or say. 

“Ronny, we must talk things over. If you can’t 
come to-morrow morning—” 

“Well, if I catch the eight-thirty from Euston, 
cross by day, you see . . . Anyhow, the sooner I 
go the sooner I’ll be back.” 

“I must speak to you before that.” 

There was something desperate in her tone. If 
she let him go now, go over to Ireland—or wher¬ 
ever he was going, there was that thought too— 
she would lose him altogether. She might be able 
to do without him; she believed she could do with¬ 
out him, in some maimed, broken-winged way, but 
he could not do without her. He had said that 
himself—speaking the truth for once: “I’m all over 
the shop without you.” She had done wrong to al¬ 
low herself to remain away from him as she had 
done—so like her father in that horror of inter¬ 
ference. The fact that she had always been ex¬ 
pecting him to come back to Ireland was no excuse 
for her; they had better have crossed on the way 
than that she should have remained, as she had 
done, overwhelmed by a sense of inertia and de¬ 
pression, moping through life like someone who had 
been too badly hurt to venture upon any new ef¬ 
fort. 

“You are going out to dinner; are you going 
on to anything else afterwards?” 




342 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Not that I know of.” 

“Well, then, come back here. I must have a talk 
with you—I must.” 

“Can’t it wait till I get back from Ireland?” He 
was tipping the table again, his head bent. 

“No, it can’t wait, or rather if it waits as long 
as all that it will be the end of everything.” 

“Look here, I may be very late.” 

“I don’t mind; I’ll be in my room—you can 
come up there.” 

“Look here, Hal. I’d rather not.” His face 
flushed heavily. “I don’t want to be a beast— 
come up to your room—not now—not till every¬ 
thing . . . Oh, till something’s been cleared up.” 

“But I want you to come. I ask you to come.” 
She hesitated, and then added with the extremest 
difficulty: “You can’t be so very late after all— 
long before bedtime. I sit up reading and writ¬ 
ing till all hours—oh, very often.” 

She was horribly embarrassed. She must have 
this quiet talk with him, and yet she shrank—more 
than words can say—from the idea of what might 
seem like an attempt to win him back by any appeal 
to his passions. Why could not things be open 
and candid between them, as between any other 
man and woman? . . . Oh, but it was impossible 
—she knew that; for the threads of their life to¬ 
gether, of their relationship, of their natural feel¬ 
ings and desires ran through everything, shaking 
them so that any clear judgment became blurred, 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


343 


confused, just when it was most needed. But still, 
whatever claim or appeal she could find it possible 
to make must be used. It was impossible for 
things to go on as they were, with Ronny looking 
so dreadfully miserable, so hopelessly beaten and 
shaken by something—what, she could not say. 

“I have not very often asked you to do anything 
you didn’t want. I ask you now. Come up for 
half an hour this evening, or—” once again she 
hesitated, “if you prefer it, there won’t be many 
people about then, we might find a quiet corner 
here. , ’ 

“No, no. That’s all right, Hal. I’ll come.” 

He half turned away, then looked back. “I 
know it’s an awful lot to ask you, but if you’ll only 
try to believe me, things will straighten themselves 
out.” He took up his hat and brushed it round 
meditatively with one hand. “I wish to goodness 
people would leave one alone,” he jerked out. “I 
don’t mean you, of course not you, but other peo¬ 
ple. Oh, well, anyhow—about half-past ten, eh? 
Will that be too late?” 

“No, that will be all right.” 

He moved away, and Henrietta, after sitting 
for a moment weighed down by a feeling as though, 
somehow or other, virtue had gone out of her, so 
that it was impossible to move—desperately tired 
and dispirited—dragged herself to her feet, col¬ 
lected her belongings, gloves, cloak and books, 
and moved slowly towards the lift and up to her 



344 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


own room-—a large, double-bedded room. Shaen’s 
hotel might have been full, as he said, but there 
was space enough and to spare here. 

She crossed to the window and stood staring out. 
It was raining, and the street below was like a 
canal shining in the lamplight, with the taxis like 
incandescent water-beetles darting to and fro along 
it. If only by some means or other she could 
get at Ronny, she thought; her brain struggling 
wearily to put herself in his place, to realize what 
he was going through; what he was planning; to 
meet him half-way and, if possible, help him. 

With all this she felt curiously detached, as 
though she were dealing with a stranger whom 
she was impelled to assist out of sheer humanity. 
There was no need for Ronny to have felt any sort 
of hesitation in coming up to her room* for it 
seemed as though nothing—nothing in heaven or 
earth, in their minds, their wills, their physical de¬ 
sires—could ever bring them together again. 

It was just eleven when he appeared. His face 
was flushed, his eyes bright and a trifle glassy, all 
his dejection gone. He had, indeed, the whole air 
of a man who has dined well and taken a fresh 
hold upon his affairs. 

He came in briskly, with a half laugh. “The 
people downstairs—it’s such a damnably respect¬ 
able place—looked at me very suspiciously: queer 
thing if a man can’t have an assignation with his 
own wife!” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


345 


He moved over to the fireplace and sat down in 
a low chair, stretching out his hands to the blaze. 
It was so damp and cold that Henrietta, beaten 
down by fatigue and depression, feeling herself 
chilled to the bone, had ordered a fire; apart from 
this, it seemed so much more easy to talk in a room 
with a fire. She realized this, and the way 
in which her husband was influenced by his sur¬ 
roundings, warmth and brightness : the sort of mood 
which came to him when he entered her room, re¬ 
marking on the comfort, the peace: “You always 
seem to be able to make any place decent.” 

She took another low chintz-covered chair and 
sat down opposite to him. The feeling of being 
almost a stranger was still there, in the face of his 
changed mood—all the more so in that there was 
no longer any of that unhappy appeal in his glance, 
such as had struck her so poignantly a few hours 
earlier. 

“Now,” he began cheerfully, “what are all these 
plans that I’m to hear of?” 

“We, father and I, thought that if we could go 
abroad, the three of us—” 

“When?” Shaen’s voice was sharp, his expres¬ 
sion had changed. 

“Well, at once. Anyhow as soon as possible.” 

“Look here, Hal, I’ve told you Tve got to go 
over to Ireland. I’m tied up for the present. It’s 
impossible to get away anywhere else. Even when 
I come back—” He broke off, as though he were 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


346 

for once at loss for words, the upper lip of his 
long Irish mouth drawn downwards, his whole look 
sullen and obstinate. 

“I know, but that won’t take you very long— 
three or four days—and then we might start.” 

“I can’t be ready by then.” The shallow excite¬ 
ment had faded out of his face. “Look here, Hal, 
it’s impossible to keep pace with all these sudden 
ideas and fancies. I had settled to go over to 
Ireland, partly because I thought you would be 
there, and now this has upset everything.” 

He stared at her hardly, with such an air of brav¬ 
ing something out that she felt sure he was not 
speaking the truth—at any rate the entire truth. 

“Why couldn’t you have stayed where you were, 
and then there would have been none of this fuss. 
All the same, I might go with you later, though I 
don’t fancy these family parties are ever much of a 
success. I’ll see—I won’t make any promises,” 
he added condescendingly. 

“Ronny, we’ve got to pick up the threads of our 
life together somehow or other.” 

“Oh, all right, all right! We needn’t go over 
all that again,” he broke in impatiently. “Any¬ 
how, where do you want to go?” 

“Somewhere where there would be plenty for 
you to do; plenty of amusement; a bright sort of 
place. I’d like that too: it’s been pretty dreary at 
Greylands all this winter. Dad thought of Monte 
Carlo. I know you love it and—” 

But Shaen had jerked himself to his feet, and 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


347 

stood with his back to the fire, staring down at her, 
his face dark and flushed. 

“Why—in the name of all that’s holy—Monte 
Carlo? Monte Carlo!” He repeated the words 
after her, as though half stupefied, hesitated for a 
moment, and began again: “What a perfectly rot¬ 
ten idea! You and old Rorke and Monte Carlo! 
No, my dear, we simply wouldn’t fit.” He laughed 
rudely, as though he had some idea of mak¬ 
ing a joke of it all, getting the better of it by 
mockery. 

“I—I must have something different,” said Hen¬ 
rietta. She spoke with a sort of desperation, very 
unusual to her. “Look here, Ronny, I must—I've 
—I’ve come to the end of things.” 

For one moment Shaen eyed her sideways cu¬ 
riously, as though something in his own mind made 
him suspect her. She knew that look, a look which 
said as plainly as words: “What the devil are you 
up to now?” and a sort of obstinacy stirred within 
her. 

After that one glance he had turned aside and 
stood with rounded back, fingering the stupid hotel 
ornaments on the mantelpiece. 

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t like Monte 
Carlo. I love sunshine and flowers and warmth. 
If we go anywhere we might as well go there. 
You always liked it—you said you liked it.” She 
felt that she was speaking stupidly, and yet she 
could not shake herself free of this sort of dull 
repetition. 


348 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“I can’t see any reason for going anywhere,” 
muttered Shaen, with his head bent. 

There was a moment’s silence, then with an effort, 
as though she had been tied to her chair, Henrietta 
rose, put one hand on his arm. 

“Look here, Ronny. Can’t you do something— 
shake yourself free?” 

“Free of what? What the devil d’ye mean?” 
He flung round, confronting her defiantly; his eyes 
wide and staring. “What are you driving at 
now ?” 

“Oh, well, you know.” She made a gesture of 
complete hopelessness. “I can’t put it into words, 
but it’s there—things have got to a hopeless im¬ 
passe between us. If you won’t meet me half-way, 
if you won’t do anything I ask, it Will be better to 
give it up.” 

“What do you mean? Give what up?” 

“This pretence of being married,” she said under 
her breath. 

“How can you say that? What nonsense! 
What do you mean? Just because I’ve got tangled 
up; because things have gone wrong? You can’t 
play about—hanky-panky tricks—with marriage 
like that. You’re my wife, and you’ll have to—” 

He broke off, baulked by her silence, her steady 
gaze; then began again: “Look here, Hal, we men 
have all sorts of business worries you don’t know 
anything about. It doesn’t touch us—you and me, 
what you are to me; you believe that, don’t you?” 

There was something of the old panic in his voice. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


349 


He put out his hand, caught at her wrist and held 
it loosely in his palm, stroking her forearm gently 
with the fingers of his other hand; the memory of 
how he used to laugh at that slender wrist and small 
white hand, “ridiculous little pud,” as he used to 
call it—and of what Lady Fair had said, somewhere 
back in the dark ages: “Henrietta, like a cool hand 
on your forehead”—came back to him. Hang it 
all, he couldn't do without her; he couldn’t! There 
must be someone to come back to. He had been so 
bucked up by his dinner, the companionship of it: 
had felt it would, after all, be easy enough to fit 
everything in, pretty well all at once, after the old 
O’Hara fashion. 

Now, quite suddenly, he was scared. He didn’t 
want to let anything go, that was the fact of it. 
Anyhow, he could not do without his wife. During 
these last few months there had always been that at 
the back of his mind: if things went wrong he would 
find Henrietta waiting for him, seeing the best that 
was in him; understanding him as no one else did. 

“Don’t go back on me, Hal. I couldn’t stand it— 
I simply couldn’t stand it.” 

He had both her hands now and she let him hold 
them, looking gravely into his eyes. 

“You know I won’t go back on you, so long as 
you really need me. If only—only—you would try 
to be frank with me—” 

“I am—look here, I am!” He drew her to him, 
slipped his hands up her arms and held her tight. 
“It’s only just for a week or two; have a little pa- 


350 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


tience, that’s all. I do love you, Hal. I care fright¬ 
fully; I swear it! But—one does get so infernally 
tangled up, you know.” 

It was strange how his usual stream of words 
seemed to have failed him. Perhaps this, more than 
anything else, impressed Henrietta with the sense 
of some real crisis, with the feeling that if the gulf 
between them were ever to be bridged it must be 
now; impelling her to the greatest effort she had 
ever made, the reversion of her every instinct— 
something like the offering* of herself—horribly dif¬ 
ficult. 

“Ronny, why don’t you stay here now—to-night 
—and let me go back to Ireland with you to-mor¬ 
row?” 

“I can’t!” He threw her away from him, al¬ 
most violently. “Look here, I can’t!” 

“We could stay there a few days and then go 
abroad.” She put aside any further mention of 
that night with a sense of burning shame, of the 
most hopeless sort of failure that can come to any 
woman. “Dad wouldn’t mind; we could go alone 
if you like—jvst you and I—or we could stay on in 
Ireland, or come back to London. Anything, any¬ 
thing you like.” 

“I can’t do it—I can’t.” He seemed overcome by 
a sort of fear, not so much of her as of himself; it 
seemed as though he backed away from her. He 
took up his hat; his face was crimson. “Look here, 
Hal, I must go.” 

“I ask you to stay,” she said desperately. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


35i 


“I can’t stay now. I can’t. It’s out of the ques¬ 
tion. Look here, Hal, I want to do the decent thing 
—you must let me go now.” He moved away from 
her, as though he were scared. She had never seen 
him look so desperate, so appealing. It was amaz¬ 
ing to think of Ronny wanting anything—anything 
on earth—and not taking it. Henrietta was com¬ 
pletely out of her bearings; nothing in his manner 
seemed to fit in with anything she had ever known 
of him. 

She had sunk back into her low chair as he pushed 
her aside, and sat staring up at him, trying to col¬ 
lect herself and speak quietly. 

“Wait for the night boat, anyhow,” she said. 
“Let’s have time to think things over—come and 
see me to-morrow morning.” 

“All right”; he had moved towards the door, and 
stood glancing back at her. “Look here, Hal, hon¬ 
estly I can’t help myself.” 

“No, no!” She was filled with the extremest pity 
for him—it was so true that he could not help him¬ 
self. “We’ll leave it now; only put off your cross¬ 
ing till late and come back and talk over things— 
Will you do that, Ronny?” 

“Yes.” He spoke hesitatingly, then quite sud¬ 
denly moved towa.rds her. Instinctively she rose 
to her feet and was clasped in his arms. For one 
moment they clung closely together, passionately, 
desperately, while it seemed as though something of 
the old love flowed between them, blending them in 


one. 


352 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Hal, Hal, don’t forget, I do care most awfully. 
I’m not much good for anything—never was—but 
it’ll all come right. They’re things I can’t get out 
of—but in a week or two—” 

“When you come back from Ireland—you won’t 
be as long as that?” 

“No, no—no time at all; and then it will be all 
right. I swear it will. We’ll go back to the old 
days. Anyhow, it’s all right now—all right, eh?” 
He took her face between his hands and pressed it, 
gazing into her eyes. Henrietta could feel that he 
was trembling from head to foot. 

“It’s all right,” she said. “I can trust you.” She 
said it and believed it; and yet at the same time 
there was, deep down in her, something which cried 
out against this, trying to make itself heard: “You 
can’t trust him, you know you can’t; you never 
could—for he can’t hurt himself he knows it, and 
you know it.” 

“Yes, yes, old thing, for God’s sake trust me,” 
he said, and turned away, without even attempting 
to kiss her. 

As he put his hand on the door she called after 
him: “There’s to-morrow.” 

“Yes, yes, to-morrow.” He opened the door and 
was gone. 


CHAPTER XXII 


All next day Henrietta stayed in the hotel. She 
said very little to her father, but he made no move 
towards getting the tickets, wiring for rooms in 
Monte Carlo, completing all the hundred and one 
petty arrangements and small purchases that they 
had talked over on the journey: always with that 
sort of feeling of building up a bulwark of cer¬ 
tainty with trifles. 

It would have been impossible for Henrietta 
to say whether she really expected Shaen. She 
watched for him, at meals or in the public rooms; 
her eyes, her ears, every nerve, astrain. But, for 
all that, she knew that there was some foreboding, 
deep down in her, which would have made her sur¬ 
prised to see him. Every landmark in the day, each 
meal as it came round, brought that sort of relief 
which comes to the fatalist when the worst is 
known; and was yet, at the same time, a knell, mark¬ 
ing the time—tolling the death of her hopes. 

Curiously enough, neither she nor her father 
spoke of sending round to Shaen’s hotel to inquire 
if he were still there. They were too alike for 
that: it would have seemed a sort of spying, utterly 
repugnant to people of their type. 

Soon after seven Henrietta went up to her own 
room to dress for dinner. The dragging day, the 

353 


354 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


strain of doubt and anxiety, had told upon her so 
that she ached from head to foot, found it impossible 
to focus her mind upon anything. It seemed, in¬ 
deed, as though she were continually forgetting 
what she was about to do—even in this simple mat¬ 
ter of dressing for dinner—moving to and fro be¬ 
tween her dressing-table and boxes, taking up first 
one thing and then another, opening and shutting 
drawers and cupboards. 

She could not make up her mind what dress to 
wear. It did not matter in the very least, but some¬ 
thing had to be decided upon. She was unaccount¬ 
ably troubled; worried and bewildered, in that vague 
way which comes to us in dreams when we are con¬ 
fusedly endeavouring to get dressed for a journey 
or a party; finding ourselves totally unable to come 
across anything which matches with anything else. 

She had brought over a good deal of luggage, 
thinner clothes than were, as yet, needed in London. 
For this had been another way of pushing down 
that sense of finality, burying it at the back of her 
mind, beneath the mental picture—an airy castle in 
Spain—of what life would be like at Monte Carlo; 
impressing upon herself the fact that her father al¬ 
ways seemed to be able to carry through anything 
upon which he had set his mind; beating up all her 
old childish faith in his infallibility, his knack of 
managing men; forgetful of how he had failed, 
once away from India, of how impossible it was 
for anyone to turn Shaen in any direction he did 
not wish to go. Sometimes he would resist and 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


355 

bluster, more often just ooze away, running through 
your fingers—and this was the most difficult of all. 

She got out a black dress but was unable to dis¬ 
cover anything apart from light-coloured shoes and 
stockings; felt herself unreasonably baulked over 
this. Everything seemed scattered about in a fash¬ 
ion completely alien to her—exquisitely dainty as 
she always was. There was even a pair of stays 
hanging over the back of one chair—the last note 
of disorder in any woman’s room. She moved over 
to them and rolled them up, meaning to put them by 
in a drawer; then forgot what she was doing, and, 
laying them down again, began to search for a hand¬ 
kerchief. 

All this was on the top of her; a sense of worry 
and hurry and bewilderment, the outcome of that ap¬ 
parently endless day. Underneath it, in the very 
centre of her being was a dull weight; the sort of 
feeling which might come to a woman who carries 
a dead child beneath her heart, sapping her strength, 
her power of coherent thought. 

She had taken off her wrist-watch and several 
small ornaments and was sitting down to change 
her shoes, when there was a knock at the door. Go¬ 
ing to it she found a waiter with a visiting-card, 
which she took in her hand and stared at for some 
moments before she realized the name upon it. 
There was another pause, another distinct effort 
while she endeavoured to connect the name with the 
person to whom it belonged. It seemed, indeed, 
as though there were a thick curtain hung between 


35^ 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


herself and any fresh impression: a curtain of which 
the warp and woof, knotted and unevenly twisted, 
was made up from the entangled threads of every¬ 
day life, with all its preoccupation and petty duties, 
the difficulty of co-ordinating one thing with an¬ 
other. 

The waiter glanced at her curiously. “The lady 
wishes to know if she can come up and speak to 
you.” 

With a conscious effort, Henrietta fitted the name 
to its owner: the fair, evenly-waved hair, the blue 
eyes and pink and white skin of Nina Arbuthnot. 

“If she will wait a minute, I will come down.” 
She had half turned, when she realized that the man 
was still holding his ground. 

“The lady wishes to speak to you alone,” he said. 
“She very particularly asked me if she might come 
up to your own room.” 

For that moment something cleared in Henri¬ 
etta’s brain. Mrs. Arbuthnot would not have come 
to see her because she liked her. She had some 
reason for it, and in that case it was best that she 
should say what she wished to say in private. 

“Ask her to come up,” she said, and turning back 
into her room, leaving the door ajar, busied her¬ 
self in the effort to produce some sort of order: 
whipped to it by the feeling that she could not bear 
to think of Nina Arbuthnot finding either herself 
or her belongings, her outward appearance, in dis¬ 
order; as if it would leave some sort of chink in 
her armour, through which the other woman would 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


357 

delight to poke her fingers—with their brightly- 
tinted, pointed nails. Having tidied the room, she 
smoothed her hair, re fastened the brooch in the front 
of her dress, and was composed and tidy as ever 
when there came a light knock at the door. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot was not tidy. To Henrietta’s 
surprise—for she had never expected any such thing, 
would not have credited her with sufficient feeling 
to allow so much as a hair to be ruffled—she seemed 
to have gone altogether to pieces. At first she 
imagined this must be the effect of some overwhelm¬ 
ing grief; but in another moment she realized that 
it was in the main, temper: a passion which over¬ 
ruled everything else, found a sort of perverted 
pleasure in letting itself go; the very angle at which 
her hat was placed upon her head was eloquent of 
this. 

Henrietta offered her a chair, but she would not 
sit down, and the two women stood facing each 
other. 

“That husband of yours,” began Mrs. Arbuthnot, 
with a gesture of angry contempt. “I suppose it 
was a put-up job between the two of you. I sup¬ 
pose you imagined that he was going alone; or 
didn’t you mind—so long as he was out of my 
reach, eh? There’s no knowing what a woman of 
your stamp minds or doesn’t mind. But there it is. 
You set your heart upon getting him away from 
me, and now you have done it. Oh, well! I for 
one can’t see what you’ve gained by it. Nonsense 
to talk of exchange being no robbery—pretty sort of 


358 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


exchange!” She spoke with the same coarseness 
with which she had uttered that insult which Shaen, 
in his adolescent pride, never forgave her; for 
which, with youthful cruelty, he had determined to 
get even with her. 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 

“You got him out of Ireland to try and keep 
him away from me. Oh, I know that. Every¬ 
body knows that. Honora said: ‘Oh, there are 
things Hal won’t put up with’—but what beats me 
is how you think you are going to benefit by it. If 
there was ever a case of ‘out of the frying-pan into 
the fire’—” She laughed loudly; then, quite sud¬ 
denly her voice dropped: “Oh well, after all, it’s 
much the same fire—come to that!” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Well, for both of us!” 

“I still don’t know what you mean.” 

“Oh well, I suppose you knew that he was going 
abroad. I suppose that was part of it.” 

“But he hasn’t gone abroad. He has gone back 
to Ireland; there was some business—” began Henri¬ 
etta; then broke off, overcome by that hopeless feel¬ 
ing of never being altogether certain of how much 
truth there was in anything which Shaen chose to 
tell her; always a little, of course—there could not 
fail to be this with any man who talked so inces¬ 
santly—a certain amount of truth interwoven with 
a fabric of lies. 

She sat down by the foot of the bed, feeling un- 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


359 

able to stand any longer; that old sense of deaden¬ 
ing bewilderment came back to her. 

She had no desire to hear what Mrs. Arbuthnot 
had to say. She wished she would go away. 
Whatever she told her did not matter—when once 
you come to the end of a thing like love nothing 
really matters. She had realized this when she 
parted from Shaen—the instant he left the room, 
though she could not have said why, after his cling¬ 
ing to her as he had done at parting, with that old 
look of panic, of desperate pleading. And that was 
not all, either, she knew she was being deceived, 
however much stricken he might be at the thought 
of it; his conscience-stricken misery only made it 
all the more hopeless, as though weakness was in 
some way as inexorable as fate. 

“He has gone to Monte Carlo/’ cried Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot, with shrill triumph in her voice. The 
thing itself was against her own interests, she was 
furious over it. If it had been possible to kill Shaen 
in some mysterious and safe way—kill him from a 
distance, mutilate his companion, she would have 
done so; it would have given her infinite satisfac¬ 
tion to see them suffer. All the same, in a lesser 
way, it pleased her to see his wife suffer, exas¬ 
perated as she had always been by Henrietta’s youth. 
There was not a line in her own face, the faintest 
fold of loosened skin beneath her chin, for which 
she did not, in some perverted fashion, long to 
avenge herself upon this chit of a girl. “Off to 


3 6 ° 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


Monte Carlo with that woman. I can’t say I ad- 
mire his taste.” 

“What woman?” Quite coolly, at the back of 
herself, away from herself, Henrietta was think¬ 
ing: “She has a Belfast accent; I never noticed 
that before.” 

“Upon my word! You don’t say that you didn’t 
know? Oh, well, if you don’t you must be a greater 
fool than I took you for. Why, everybody has 
been talking about them—everybody! Before he 
went out to Ireland last time they were the talk of 
London—that’s what amused me so—getting him 
away. . . . And now. . . . Oh well! Anyhow, he 
has thrown his cap over the windmill this time—as 
far as a man can do. Though I suppose you would 
have him back, forgive him. You are the sort of 
woman for that.” 

“He has gone to Ireland.” Henrietta repeated 
the words almost stupidly. “He left early this 
morning. I know—I said good-bye to him last 
night.” 

“Oh well, you may have said good-bye to him, 
but, for all that, he must have been knocking about 
London all day, for I saw him at Victoria at six this 
evening—and the Cristal woman with him—a stack 
of luggage! I found out from Cook’s people where 
they had booked for.” 

“Oh!” 

“Oh! . . . Oh! . . . That’s one for me for spy¬ 
ing, I suppose! ‘Oh, oh!’” Nina Arbuthnot 
stamped her foot, wild with impatience. “Look 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 361 

here, what’s the matter with you? There seems to 
be no life in you. To sit there tamely and keep on 
saying, ‘Oh! . . . Oh!’'—or, ‘He’s gone to Ireland 
. . . he’s gone to Ireland!’—like a parrot—as if 
that would make him anywhere but where he is. 
Oughtn’t I to know ?” She gave a harsh laugh, the 
half-triumphant laugh of a coarse-minded woman, 
forgetful of appearances—of the veneer of good 
breeding. “I saw him go, I tell you!” She broke 
off, staring, then began again: “Don’t you hear 
what I say, or are you really too stupid to under¬ 
stand? He’s gone off to Monte Carlo with that 
woman, Fay Cristal—there, is that plain enough 
for you! He has taken us both in.” She laughed 
again. “It’s queer to think of—you and I in the 
same boat—but, after all, you’re his wife. By God! 
If I were that I wouldn’t sit there staring in front 
of me. Do you realize what it means? Do you 
realize it?” 

She put one hand on the rail of the bed and shook 
it. If she had dared to touch Henrietta she would 
have shaken her too; but she was half frightened 
of her and her immobility, of the fact that she had 
no faintest idea of what was going on in the brain 
at the back of that quiet face. 

“Anyhow, something’s got to be done. Look 
here, I don’t see why we shouldn’t join forces. 
You are his wife, but after all I’ve got pretty w*ell 
as good a claim—more, if it comes to that. Oh, by 
God, what a fool I’ve been! You’ve the laugh of 
me there—ach!” She placed one hand on the knob 


362 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


of the bed and beat upon it with the other. “A boy 
like that! A boy whom I always imagined I could 
do anything with—to let myself be taken in by a 
boy! But we don’t know ourselves, that’s the fact 
of the matter. One says one could never do this 
or that—and then one goes and does it. ... You 
know— Oh well, after all, we’re in the same box. 
You risked everything—I wonder what you knew, 
or thought. But anyhow you got him—something 
for your pains: position, title, all that—it’s I who 
am left with nothing—like a servant-girl—landed!” 

She broke off and then began again wildly: “And 
what am I going to do now, I’d like to know? It 
seems such a rotten shame; it isn’t as though I were 
the sort of woman that was always carrying on with 
men, as lots of them do. . . . But I was always so 
careful, always drew the line, and now, to be let in 
like this!” 

She seemed beside herself; not with regret or 
shame, but with sheer fury. 

“Something ought to be done with him. Men 
ought not to be allowed to go about the world like 
that—beasts! But I don’t believe that he cares for 
anybody, or anything—he’s that sort; and now— 
well, after all, it has got to do with you. You’ll 
have to help me—the thing’s got to be hushed up 
somehow or other. I have always been so contemp¬ 
tuous of women who get into this sort of trouble; 
everybody knows that, and now it will make it all 
the worse for me—the laugh against me.” 

“What do you mean? What sort of trouble?” 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


363 


“Oh, haven’t I made it clear? Are you so dense? 
You must have known what was going on between 
us—what a fool I was! I believe that even then 
—right up to the very end—I looked on him as a 
sort of kid one could do anything with. And 
now—” 

“What sort of trouble?” Henrietta repeated the 
words, her eyes steady on the other woman’s face. 
It seemed as though her mind were clearing, things 
coming back to her. She remembered the re¬ 
proaches which she had heard from beneath the ter¬ 
race at Cloncross the evening of the dance: that— 
“After all there’s been between us?” 

“What do you mean—what sort of trouble?” 
She nailed her to it with cold persistence—though 
she did not seem to care much one way or another. 
But Mrs. Arbuthnot was that sort of woman who 
cannot bear to put anything altogether plainly into 
words; a little of her fury seemed to have ebbed out 
of her. Twisting round the knob of the bed in both 
hands, her head bent, she muttered something about: 
“The kind of trouble that does come to women who 
—who make fools of themselves.” 

“You mean that you are going to have a child?” 

“Well, it sounds like it, doesn’t it?” She 
laughed, taking refuge in a sort of rudeness—the 
common refuge of the underbred. 

“By my husband?” 

“Yes! That’s what makes me so mad, so wild 
with myself! If it had been a real man . . . but 
a boy like that—a boy I always laughed at! I was 


364 


ALAS. THAT SPRING—! 


married for years, and this was one of the things 
that I always stuck out against—even with my hus¬ 
band. I hated it—he used to say I was so cold. 
But I wouldn’t have it—I wouldn’t! . . . Why 
should women be put to all sorts of torture just to 
satisfy men’s vanity? That’s what it comes to. 
All this talk about parentage!—I wouldn’t have it, 
I tell you—and now . . . My God! I only hope 
to goodness the wretched thing won’t live.” 

She broke off into a sudden passion of tears— 
angry, uncontrolled sobs. 

“I don’t see what I’m to do—things get out some¬ 
how or other—they always do. You’ll have to 
help me.” 

“I can’t help you. No one can help anyone else.” 
Henrietta spoke as though she were in a dream, her 
voice far away to her own ears. 

“That’s nonsense; you’ll have to—you’ll have to. 
You’re his wife, and in some way you are respon¬ 
sible—you should have looked after him. Anyhow, 
he has got to come back. Why should he be enjoy¬ 
ing himself in Monte Carlo while I’m going through 
hell? I knew something was up; I knew he was 
trying to sneak away; but he was too quick for me. 
I set someone on to watch him—one of these people 
who advertise—but the fool was too late. I got to 
Victoria station just as the gates were shut. They 
were late, too, but not so late as I was. I know now 
what animals feel like—shut away behind iron bars 
—I know how I felt when that brute of a man 
slammed the gate in my face. But he’s got to be 



ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 365 

made to come back—why should he get out of it all? 
Look here, why can’t we join forces ?” 

She leaned forward, almost ingratiatingly: “He’s 
done you in the eye, too; we shall have to help each 
other—us two women. We’ll make him come back 
and face it out, somehow or other, between us. 
After all, you don’t care for him, and if you divorce 
him he’ll be bound to marry me—I’ll see to that; 
no man has ever made a fool of me yet, and no man 
ever will. . . . Oh, this —I suppose we all have our 
moments of weakness, but . . . Oh well, what’s 
over and done with doesn’t matter—but you’ll help 
me now?” 

“No one can help you.” 

“If you wanted to you could.” 

“I can’t help myself.” 

Henrietta had been sitting absolutely immobile, 
her hands folded in her lap; she raised them now, 
with a little gesture of despair: dropped them again, 
palm uppermost. 

“If you were married to him you could not hold 
him—nobody could. You could never be certain for 
one single moment.” 

“Well, what about the kid, then? Why should 
I suffer ? I don’t see why I should suffer. I never 
got in a mess like this before. To be caught like 
this—the first time. Oh, it makes me mad!” 

“It wouldn’t matter what you did. It wouldn’t 
make any difference if you brought him back; if I 
did as you say—divorced him and made him marry 
you.” 



3 66 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


“Then you won’t do anything?” 

Nina Arbuthnot’s voice was sullen. It seemed 
as though her rage was spent, had worn itself down 
to a dull, sulky resentment. 

“All I can say is that it’s damned hard luck.” 

Henrietta did not speak. The other woman 
stared at her for a moment, then picked up her 
gloves, which she had thrown rather than dropped 
on the floor. “Oh well, I suppose I can find people 
who will help me—doctors and people like that. 
Anyhow, I don’t mean to let myself be beaten by a 
boy like that—a fool of a boy.” 

She moved towards the door, then hesitated a 
moment, standing looking back. “Oh well, I sup¬ 
pose it’s pretty rotten for you too—though he al¬ 
ways said you didn’t care, would divorce him like 
a shot—were so cold.” She broke off with a short 
ugly laugh. “Oh well, I suppose that’s what all men 
say of their wives!” she added, and turned and went 
out, leaving the door wide open behind her. 



CHAPTER XXIII 


It is. strange the way in which the human body will 
go on working, the outward routine continue, all 
the gestures of everyday life seeming to remain the 
same when the mainspring of the whole thing is 
broken or lost. It cannot be for long. Quite sud¬ 
denly the body—realizing that the inward control 
is gone, moving more quickly for the moment, in a 
meaningless and amazed fashion—runs down, 
ceases to work, and remains flaccid; useless, and lu¬ 
dicrous as a marionette with the guiding wire 
broken; its limbs hanging, its mechanically-con¬ 
trolled chin dropped, its head lolled forward, its 
very clothes seeming to hang more loosely upon it. 

Henrietta finished dressing for dinner quickly 
with that sort of decision which had been impossible 
to her half an hour earlier: a decision which was in 
itself a sign that her mind had ceased to work, so 
that she was no longer preoccupied—for God knows 
she had other things to think of, if she could think, 
than the business of clothing herself—that, for the 
time being, she felt nothing; her every action purely 
mechanical, following that sort of routine to which 
she had been for so long accustomed. 

To outward appearance there was not the faintest 
change in her when she joined her father at dinner, 

367 


3 68 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


apologizing for her lateness: beautiful and serene, 
so completely finished that people glancing at her, 
admiring her, made sure of a sort of coldness. 

“Someone came to see me and delayed me,” she 
said. She did not mention who it was, and Rorke 
wondered, scared by some change which he realized, 
not in the least from any reason that he could put 
his finger on and say, “It is this or that”; “She is 
paler, more disturbed, less at ease.” Indeed, there 
was no change of that sort, though the something 
there was throbbed through him like one of his own 
nerves, jagged and enflamed. She talked more than 
she had done for some time, more than she usually 
did; almost running on—for her, Henrietta, usually 
so silent—though it was noticeable that she never 
once mentioned her husband’s name, that there was 
no renewal of their plans for going abroad together. 

All the same—“Something’s gone terribly 
wrong!” Rorke repeated it to himself, as a ques¬ 
tion which might bring its own answer, yet found 
none. He himself was involved in the catastrophe, 
for that the bond between them, which had been 
growing stronger and more articulate during the 
last few weeks, was now broken. Desperately, 
miserably, he searched back through his own mind 
for anything in his own behaviour which might 
have caused this change. There was that old un¬ 
forgivable cowardliness, of letting her go her own 
way when she was far, far too young to bear the 
burden of responsibility which he laid upon her 
young shoulders; and yet it was not that, he knew 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


369 

Henrietta too well to believe it, though this was the 
first idea which had swept over him. She was far 
too generous to hark back, to nurse a grudge—come 
to that, she had never, even in her most inmost 
thoughts, he was certain of that, acknowledged his 
failure. 

No, no, it had nothing to do with him. And if 
it hadn’t to do with him it had to do with Shaen— 
so small was her world; while he himself was 
dragged down for no fault of his own, but simply 
because with the cessation of feeling in one direction 
the whole thing went: he had a mental picture of 
a telegraphic system, with one wire tearing down 
another. 

It was not until they were drinking their coffee, 
still seated at the table in one corner of the quiet 
little dining-room, that she so much as mentioned 
herself. 

“Father, I’m thinking—if you don’t mind aw¬ 
fully—” She hesitated for so long that it seemed 
as though she had changed her mind about speaking 
■—her elbow on the table, her chin propped in the 
palm of one hand, her eyes far away as though she 
were projecting herself into some future where her 
father was unable to follow her; looking forward 
into something beyond his ken, something altogether 
out of sight and mind of anyone whose feelings, 
however desperate, still held that sense of respon¬ 
sibility or hope which keeps their attention on 
things normal and of this earth. 

“If you wouldn’t mind—if you didn’t think it 


370 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


unreasonable, upsetting all our plans—I feel I—I 
would like to go back to Ireland—just for a little.” 

“Oh, why not!” Rorke was conscious of a sud¬ 
den cessation of his fears. During the course of 
the day she had spoken of her husband going back 
to Ireland, and it seemed that here was a very simple 
explanation—he forced himself to take it at that— 
of the change in Henrietta. She was anxious to be 
with her husband, distressed by the appearance of 
throwing him, her father, over. He himself had 
just one pang at the thought of being dropped like 
the pilot, no longer wanted, but he put it behind him. 
Later on it was more dreadfully embittering than 
all else put together, to remember how he had done 
this deliberately—with a sort of mental patting on 
the back: to realise how futilely one can act when 
one goes against instinct, overcome by a smug desire 
to do what is right; obliterating oneself, presump¬ 
tuous in the attitude of a spurious Christ. 

“Oh, of course! Why not, my dear? The best 
thing you can do!” He was actually effusive for 
him. “You two go off together and don’t bother 
about me; I can find plenty to amuse myself in 
London. We can talk over the other plans when 
you come back.” 

Henrietta turned her head and glanced at him 
with wide eyes, her lips parted. It seemed as 
though in some strange way he was smoothing out 
a path before her, relieving her of any sort of excuse 
or explanation. 

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure—” she began, 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


37 1 


feeling that it was impossible that she should lie to 
him by mere passive acquiescence, then broke off, 
overcome, more than anything else, by a sense of 
immeasurable fatigue: a feeling as though she had 
no strength left for any sort of explanation even so 
simple as this: “Ronny’s not gone to Ireland. 
He’s gone somewhere else. It’s only that I want 
to be back home—I want to be alone.” 

It seemed impossible to get this thought into 
words. She was appalled at the number which 
would be wanted: the mental picture of the sentences 
trailing out, fold upon fold, in front of her. And 
even that would not have been all. Once she started 
explaining there was something else which would 
have to follow—something still further on that she 
intended to do. Come to that, she would be blocked 
there, anyhow, for the simple reason that she did 
not know what it was. It was there. There was 
no doubt about that—no doubt whatever—some¬ 
thing inevitable. Wave upon wave, a sense of the 
ordered drama of life swept through her mind like 
the sound of many men—so many that the beat of 
their feet was like the sound of the sea—marching 
to the tune of all those things which Mr. Fielden 
had said about her love and the inevitability of 
tiagedy, along with her own realization of the short¬ 
ness of time—drum and fife, shrill, insistent. 

She was going to Ireland for some very special 
reason, though she did not know what. She was 
like a person under sealed orders, moving on a 
settled route to an unknown destination. 


372 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

“What are you going to do? Is he calling here 
for you, or will you meet him at Euston?” 

“Euston, I think.” She had risen from the table, 
and they stood for a moment facing each other 
across it. 

“Would you rather I didn’t come to the station 
with you?” Rorke’s gaze held something of that 
old curious diffidence. Whatever the trouble was— 
trouble or reconciliation—it seemed to lie between 
Henrietta and her husband, and he was frightened 
of interfering, making some sort of wrong move. 
Looking back at it all afterwards he realized this: 
that tragic quality of mental cowardice which is so 
fearful of any sort of responsibility as far as other 
people are concerned. “I will come if you like; if 
I can be of any use to you.” 

“No, no. Ell be all right.” The words: “Shaen 
will meet me there,” were clear in her brain, but it 
was impossible to express them, tell him a direct lie 
in the face of his anxiety, his desperate fear of 
hampering her by any sort of personal demand. 

“We’ll have breakfast together before you go?” 

“If you don’t mind. I—it will make the day so 
long for you—” 

“Oh, that’s all right.” They had turned and 
were moving, side by side, towards the lounge. 
“Of course you’ve got all sorts of things to think 
of.” She felt the disappointment, the sort of flat¬ 
ness in his voice, and yet for once she could not re¬ 
spond, make it easier for him; she could not, simply 
could not. She must be alone, that was all she 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


373 


wanted; it was impossible to bear the thought of 
any renewal of these passive untruths, impossible 
to leave him under the freshened impression that 
Shaen was actually waiting for her. She put one 
hand on his arm. 

“Father, it’s hateful of me to go off like this 
but—oh, I can't help myself.” It was dreadfully 
true; she could no longer help herself; was over¬ 
come, deadened by that sort of feeling as though 
she were no longer herself, which comes to all of us 
in moments of intense mental strain or suffering. 
That stupefied amazement at the stranger who has 
invaded and taken command of our personality; 
speaking with our voice, moving with our limbs— 
and yet with ourselves looking on at it all from a 
great distance—outraged and yet totally unable to 
intervene. 


CHAPTER XXIV 




The whole side of the Slieve Myshall was in shade; 
not the dark blue shades of midday, but a pale, 
smooth wash of grey like the look in the eyes of a 
newly-awakened child, blank and noncommittal. 
The world immediately beneath Henrietta was 
softly blotted in with different shades of the same 
colour—river and trees, bog-land and the smaller 
lakes: but further still, Lough Conn caught the first 
rays of the sun coming up over the shoulder of the 
mountain and flashed with a clear, white radiance, 
like an immense pear-shaped fragment of broken 
mirror; while the plains around and beyond, stretch¬ 
ing to the further hills, low and blue on the horizon, 
showed up in brilliant patches of light where the 
young green lay gold beneath the sunshine. 

Henrietta sat at the mouth of the cave, her knees 
drawn up to her chin, her arms folded around them. 
She was in her riding-dress, but she had left Grizel 
further down the mountainside, and walked up to 
that plateau which she and Shaen had once spoken 
of as their own—moving very slowly, for she had 
a strange feeling at the back of her mind as though 
she were dropping the world away from her as she 
mounted; leaving it without regret and yet with a 
deep sense of tenderness; unwilling to seem to hurt 
it—this beautiful world which had been in some 

374 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


375 

ways so good to her—by any display of eagerness 
to be done with it. 

She had arrived at Castle ford the night before, 
got out of the train with that sort of sensation which 
a ghost might have, revisiting its old haunts, won¬ 
dering at itself as it had been; scarcely believing one 
half of all its memory tells it. 

And yet there could not have well been anything 
less ghostlike than the little station bathed in the 
warm sunshine, looking precisely the same as it had 
done the very first time she and her father arrived 
there on coming home from India; she herself, a 
small, erect child, apparently so self-possessed, thin 
and pallid, bleached by the tropical heat, screwed 
up tremendously tight with an overwhelming ex¬ 
citement over this homecoming of which she had 
heard so much—eyes and ears, every nerve raw 
with the strain that was being put upon them, try¬ 
ing to take in everything at once. Here was the 
same porter, with the same look of self-conscious, 
business-like importance; the same monotonous cry, 
which had struck her so comically on her first ar¬ 
rival, though it was not until later on that she had 
realized the full, the delightful inanity of it: “Any¬ 
one there for here?—Anyone there for here?” A 
cry to which the young O’Haras were so accustomed 
that it had passed unnoticed until she spoke of it, 
when they caught it up as a tribal cry of their own: 
“Anyone there for here?” “Anyone there for 
here?” 

She had not thought of letting anyone know that 



376 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


she was coming, but there was a jarvey named Har¬ 
rison O’Grady waiting outside on the chance of a 
fare—with a mere frame of a chestnut horse tied 
up with string to his disreputable jaunting-car— 
who waved his whip ecstatically at sight of her, be¬ 
seeching her custom. 

He talked to her the whole way to Greylands. 
What he said in his raucous sing-song voice gritted 
and flowed, like the waves on a shingle shore, in 
at one ear and out at the other; but, apart from 
this, Henrietta’s every sense was almost preternatur- 
ally alert. She saw the countryside as though she 
had come to it for the first time: even O’Grady, 
with his long, fox-like face fringed with reddish 
whiskers, struck her as something dreamt of but 
never really seen. 

Close to the gates of Greylands they overtook 
Mr. Fielden walking like a crow—things like this 
were wonderfully clear to Henrietta just now— 
with that same grotesque half-hopping motion of his 
long black legs, his coat flapping in the gusty spring 
wind. She had hoped to pass him, but he looked 
back at the car and recognized her, so that she was 
obliged to stop. 

“Have you come back for good?” he asked her, 
and she answered “Yes,” with a sudden deep sense 
of peace, as though the whole jig-saw puzzle of life 
had suddenly slid together, was fitted bit to bit: 
finished and done with, all ready to put away. 

O’Grady, realizing a pause between the two, went 
on with his own tale, stimulated by an enlarged 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


377 


audience: the terrible price of what was left of last 
year’s hay, the iniquitous charges of the farrier; 
the contrariness of the pig that had died on him; 
the hard times all round; flourishing off, quite sud¬ 
denly, into a description of his daughter’s wedding 
and the glories of it, vaunting the fact that she had 
married “a warm man,” that there had never been 
such a wedding-feast in the whole of county Mayo 
—“Lashin’s and laevin’s, butther on bacon”—then 
pulling himself together suddenly, and harking 
back to his recital of the woeful poverty which 
overwhelmed him: “An’ nothin’ more than 
chopped straw fur the skin this week past an’ 
more.” He was so full of himself that he went on 
talking, heedless of what Fielden was saying, lean¬ 
ing against the footboard of the opposite side of 
the car and looking up at Henrietta. 

“It’s come—the trouble, eh?” 

“I don’t know.” She spoke slowly, wonder- 
ingly, for indeed she did not know. It seemed as 
though that last shaft of Nina Arbuthnot’s had 
numbed her so that she resembled a person who, 
with the actual sharp agony of some dreadful ill¬ 
ness at an end, is conscious of nothing more than 
the relief and languor of on-coming death, like Sir 
Roland at his Dark Tower. 

“No, I don’t think I am unhappy.” She hesi¬ 
tated for a moment, then went on more quickly 
with a sudden physical appeal: “I’m sorry—so 
stupid—but I’m most frightfully tired.” She 
smiled a wan little smile which came back to him 


37 8 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


afterwards, whenever he thought of her. “I feel 
as if I could sleep and sleep and sleep for ever.” 

“Well, make haste and get home to bed, my child. 
You look as if a breath would blow you away. 
I’ll come up and see you to-morrow.” 

She nodded and smiled again, with a word to 
O’Grady, who whipped up his sorry steed. 

The March dust still thick on the roadway rose 
in clouds as they drove away, enveloping the car 
in a golden mist, wrapping it away from Fielden. 
They were bound in the same direction and yet she 
had not offered him a lift. That was not like Hen¬ 
rietta. She was alone, so Rorke must have stayed 
in London—and where was her husband? They 
had spoken of going abroad together, had seemed 
to regard it as a settled thing. Why, then, had she 
come back like this—looking like this? What had 
she come for, all alone—so lost-looking? He asked 
himself that question, but could find no answer to 
it save in the poignant memory of her face with 
that smile upon it: infinitely sad, and yet with a 
sort of high, excited courage at the back of it. 

He was a fool not to have kept her, or claimed 
a seat in the car at her side. He had half a mind 
to walk on to Greylands, find out who was there 
and whether she was being properly looked after; 
but his queer, awkward shyness, his own love for 
her, transfixed him. What would she, a married 
woman, think of him dogging her about like that? 
Besides, she had made it evident that she wanted to 
rest, be alone. “Til go up early to-morrow,” he 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


379 


thought, “directly after breakfast. She’ll be all 
right till then. Likely enough there’s nothing 
wrong; women have got a queer way of looking 
when they’re tired: as if their bodies were being 
peeled away from them.” 

Curiously enough, though Henrietta’s whole de- 
sire had been for sleep, she could not so much as 
shut her eyes all that night. Cooky had prepared 
a meal for her but she could scarcely touch it. She 
did not feel ill. It seemed, indeed, as though she 
felt nothing apart from this sense of absolute, over¬ 
whelming fatigue, drugged by it; like a person 
who, after an insufficient sleeping-draught, feels his 
heavy brain screwed up as if in a vice, from which 
it struggles dully, hopelessly, to escape. 

She went up to bed before it was dark, having 
wandered listlessly from one room to another, sat 
down and got up again. The drawing-room was 
more ghostlike than ever, shrouded in sheets; 
everything more or less packed away, for they hadi 
expected to be absent for several months at least.. 
The glances of the servants followed her, uneasy 
and curious, chafed her like a rough woollen gar¬ 
ment too close against her skin. The house itself 
pressed tightly about her, hard and unyielding, like 
some torture devised in the form of a wooden suit. 

The bedroom which she had occupied with Shaen, 
a vast bare apartment, was, fortunately enough, dis¬ 
mantled, and she was infinitely* relieved to be able 
to take refuge in the little room yvhich she had had. 
as a child. 


3 So 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


The magnolia was just opening and the great 
cup-like flowers breathed out exquisite gusts of per¬ 
fume which floated in through her window. Lying 
in bed she could hear the horses moving in the 
stables; an owl hooted; from somewhere far away 
towards the mountains came the sharp, reiterated 
bark of a fox, the wildest of all sounds left to us. 

She was so tired that it seemed as though she had 
not energy to turn, lay stretched flat on her back 
with her arms straight at her side. Soon after ten 
o’clock someone had knocked at her door—Cooky, 
or one of the other servants—opened it, peeped in, 
and then gone away again, fancying that she was 
asleep. 

The night passed, neither quickly nor slowly. It 
seemed, indeed, as though there were no time left; 
as though she herself, lying there so straight in her 
bed, were completely detached from the usual order 
of life: hung in a space which excluded time; wait¬ 
ing for something and yet not in the very least con¬ 
cerned to know what it might be. 

It came to her with the first hint of dawn: more 
inevitable than any spoken word, for the simple 
reason that it diffused the whole of her person, 
drenched her with the sense of something entirely 
inevitable, as natural to her as breath, ordained 
from the very moment of birth or, maybe, long 
before. 

She got up and dressed, went downstairs, let her¬ 
self out at the back door, and crossed the yard. 
The stables and harness-room were unlocked in the 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 381 

usual Irish fashion, and, saddling Grizel, she 
mounted her and rode off into the chill dawn, with 
the morning mist as thick as a fog; gathering on 
her eyelashes so that they felt like wet curtains 
across her eyes; while Grizel stepped with that same 
tippitty motion which she had used so long ago 
when they rode out through the night. Henrietta 
could feel her shivering beneath her thin skin— 
small, exquisite shivers of pure excitement and de¬ 
light. As they stopped to open a gate she put back 
her velvety muzzle and rubbed it against her mis¬ 
tress’ stirrup foot. But Henrietta did not pat her, 
hardly spoke to her, though the poor beast asked 
for it with a soft whinny, a pettish movement of 
her head. 

Henrietta left her at the Blakes’ farm with no 
thought of regret, though she had loved her, knew 
that she would never see her again. She was leav¬ 
ing more than that, but it meant nothing to her, 
while that vague sense of tenderness and regret was 
all for Nature: the coming and going of the sea¬ 
sons, the blossoming of the flowers, the winds; the 
brilliance of young grass in between the shadow of 
tall trees, running out trying to hide it; the grey 
puffs of cloud-like pollen blown from the fir-trees 
in spring-time—odd how she should remember that, 
then. 

She had no thought of people, not even of her 
father: was completely emptied of all human affec¬ 
tions. She had been right when she told Fielden, 
months before, that there was nothing to her apart 


3&2 ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 

from her love for Shaen. So long as this lasted 
other things held her: other interests ran along with 
it, entwined with it, strengthening and sweetening; 
all sorts of things—joys, and the hope of joys; her 
interest in, and consideration for, others; her love 
of nature, the quick sense of life which came to her 
with certain aspects of sunlight over a field of young 
wheat; the scent of bean flowers and eglantine; the 
sheets of bluebells under budding trees; buds them¬ 
selves, black on the ash, ruby on the lime; young 
beech leaves with their fringe of pale down; osier 
beds in winter. 

Now it had come to this, that there was nothing 
left. It was not her sense of the loss of Shaen’s 
love which broke her—such as it was, it still re¬ 
mained, errant and diluted—but the realization that 
she herself was emptied of all feeling for him, 
empty as an oak ball hollowed out by some small, 
burrowing insect. The world itself, stretching 
away below her, meant nothing, held no sort of 
message so far as humanity was concerned. She 
could not go back over the past as most of us do 
in such moments—forever gathering them up sadly 
enough, arranging and re-arranging them as best we 
may; like a child with empty shells on the seashore 
—for there was nothing left of it. 

She had formulated no sort of plan. If she had 
been dramatic enough to stand apart from herself, 
with any sort of belief—Christian or pagan—she 
might have thought, “I am being led,” but she was 
too quiescent for this. 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 383 

The sun was level with the top of the mountain 
before she rose to her feet and walked over to that 
tiny lake in which—or so Shaen had told her on 
the morning which followed that fateful night—it 
would be dangerous for her to bathe; the one point 
of life—the only liberty of choice—left showing 
itself in her avoidance, and even that was invol¬ 
untary, of the cave itself. 

The fine young grass was a clear green round the 
water’s edge; with a few pale harebells struggling 
to life in the chill spring air; while the high-hunched 
shoulder of the mountain—a Fielden-like shoulder 
—bent above it, shutting away the sunshine, the 
smallest rippling breath of air; so that it lay there 
dark and glossy and unstirred as black ice—shining 
like onyx. 

“Deep as blazes” was what Shaen had said. 
And did not that, in itself, show how little he 
caught at the true meaning of things; to use the 
word “blazes,” and the picture it invoked—flames 
high and flashing, wild with life—in connection 
with this, so still and secret, secret as the grave? 

It was strange how that old horror of drowning 
had dropped away from Henrietta with everything 
else; so that this thing which had once seemed so 
cruel seemed now kind—most kind in its very in¬ 
difference, its silence, its abstraction: offering some¬ 
thing yet pressing nothing upon her: “Take it or 
leave it”—with none of those everlasting, emo¬ 
tional demands of humanity. 

She stooped and touched the water with her hand. 


3 8 4 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


She had half, in the deadened way which was all of 
feeling left to her, dreaded the cold. But it was 
not even this; or maybe her body was in some 
queer way in harmony with it, for it made no im¬ 
pression upon her skin. Even as she slipped down 
into it there was no sense of panic, no instinct for 
struggle: rather that sort of feeling of folded 
sheets round a tired body at the end of a hard day: 
the sliding down into them, the smooth, shining, 
lovely touch of the linen: and then sleep, with the 
water flattening itself out above her, smooth and 

dark and secret in its hollow. 

• •••••• 

“Shaen!” Fay Cristal, in an elaborate morning 
wrapper, seated by the open window of her bed¬ 
room—which looked out upon the hotel gardens, 
ablaze with flowers; the mountains; the curve of 
the town-fringed bay; the deep lapis lazuli blue of 
the sea, dotted with small white and brown sails, 
like butterflies upon an unbroken field of blue flowers 
—glanced up from the three-days’ old Times which 
lay upon her knee, and across at Shaen, in another 
low chair, pouring out his morning coffee, bright 
eyed and absolutely free of care; still overflowing 
with elation at a lucky coup of the previous day. 

“Hullo?” 

“Oh, I wasn’t really speaking to you— My word 
how lazy you look! I never saw anyone so com¬ 
pletely fitted to this sort of life—you must always 
wear blue and white pyjamas if you want to look 
your best in your interludes, my dear— Oh, but it’s 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


385 


here—the name . . . Wait a minute—hang it all, 
where has it got to?” She followed the obituary 
column with her finger. “There—‘Shaen’—it 
seemed so queer to come across your name jump¬ 
ing out at me like that! . . . O-oh! ... No, no, 
my mistake!” 

She crumpled up the paper and thrust it down 
among the cushions at her side—her second 
thought: “What’s the good of letting any of his 
mouldy old relations spoil our good time for us?” 

“What is it? Here, give me that paper.” 

“No, no—nothing! Look here, if we don’t start 
dressing we shall have no time for anything be¬ 
fore lunch—and such a gorgeous day—does one 
ever have such weather anywhere, except at old 
Monte?” 

“Give me that paper.” Shaen was standing over 
her, the colour wiped out of his fresh brown face. 
A sudden awful premonition had swept over him. 
After all, there was only one other Shaen so far 
as he knew. “It’s—it’s—look here—damn it all, 
there isn’t anyone apart from—” 

His jaw dropped and he stared at her. It 
seemed as though something had taken hold of him, 
was shaking him to and fro like a rat. For one 
long minute his glance ran round the room as 
though in search of some sort of relief—or was it 
chance of escape, like a wild animal taking stock of 
its cage?—curiously conscious of everything in it; 
the litter of costly knick-knacks on the dressing- 
table, the wide bed with the clothes turned back 



3 86 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


from it; Fay’s own clothes everywhere, flung over 
the chairs, filling the half-open wardrobe, hanging 
over the edges of the half-closed drawers—every¬ 
thing pink and white, frothy with lace—the immense 
bouquet of pink roses on the table at the foot of the 
bed, all overblown, with the petals fallen on to the 
polished surface reflected in it. 

He dragged his gaze back to his companion’s 
face, overblown as the roses. After all, it was not 
the room that he wanted to break away from, but 
something that she was going to tell him—some¬ 
thing on the leash straining to spring, something 
far more than Fay herself could have anything to 
do with. 

“Good God! It can’t be—” 

He broke off; then realizing that his mouth was 
hanging open, closed it, running his tongue round 
the dry lips, his bright blue eyes fixed on her, furi¬ 
ously incredulous as a child’s. 

“It can’t be! I couldn’t stand it—I couldn’t 
stand it! Hal—Hal! Damn it all—! But . . . 
my wife!” His voice was high with amazement, 
rising shrilly on the old familiar phrase—“I 
couldn’t stand it!” It was as though someone had 
offered him some almost unbearable insult. 

Fay Cristal looked at him not altogether with¬ 
out sympathy. In her own way she was a phi¬ 
losopher. Men could go stark staring mad about 
her, risk everything for her: and yet at the same 
time love their wives. She had a way of testing 
them over this—whether they minded speaking of 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 387 

their lawful partners, or whether they didn’t: talked 
of them themselves disparagingly to her—to any¬ 
one. Once, once only, she had dared to lay her 
tongue on Henrietta. But never again, for no lie 
of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s many lies had been so cruel, 
so unfounded as that one in which she declared that 
Shaen had spoken of getting a divorce from his 
wife. 

“Give me that paper.” Shaen’s voice sounded as 
though he had been shouting until it had cracked. 
She took the paper from its hiding-place and 
smoothed it out on her knee. So that was who it 
was, was it? It would spoil their time together, 
and really he was such fun, such good company. 
But all the same, he would have to know. “Poor 
kid! Poor kid!” she said to herself with something 
of that same mothering sense which had formed so 
large a part of Henrietta’s love for her husband. 
“He did care then,” and again, “Rotten luck!” for 
there was no trace of malice in her. She had no 
thought of getting hold of Shaen “for keeps,” as 
she herself would have said: there was no pretence 
of love—just having a good time together, and 
what a good time it had been! All the same, she 
remembered that girl whom she had seen in the op¬ 
posite box at the music-hall. Such a child, too! 
Lord! what a tangle people get themselves into! 
“Drowned—accidentally drowned—” there was 
something queer about that “accidental,” so un¬ 
necessary if it were true. 

“Look here, Shaen—I’m afraid, old thing, that 


3 88 


ALAS, THAT SPRING—! 


there’s no mistake about it. I suppose no one knew 
your address, and that’s why—” She broke off; 
then began again, reading from the paper: “Hen¬ 
rietta Millicent, wife of—” 

She was interrupted by Shaen’s cry: “What’s 
that? Drowned—drowned!” he broke off, and be¬ 
gan again violently, as though in a rage. “But 
that’s rot; I taught her to swim in the West Indies 
—I taught her—taught her myself! Why, look 
here—” He stopped, stared for a moment as 
though he saw something of which he was alto¬ 
gether incredulous, then flung himself on his knees 
at his companion’s side. “Look here, Fay, it’s too 
awful—too awful! It can’t be true! How can it 
be true? God couldn’t be so cruel! I couldn’t 
stand it! Hal—Hal—why, she’s only a kid, just 
nineteen!—God couldn’t—” The tears were stream¬ 
ing down his face as he buried it in her lap. She 
could feel them scalding hot through her thin skirt, 
as she bent over him, smoothing his hair with 
gentle fingers. “Poor kid! Poor kid!” 









































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